#and I actually worry about shit like government surveillance which for all your claims... you sure seem happy to accept it in this case

[the-rose-clad-demon-doctor]

Here’s a short something based on the dream I had. I’d like to call it the Wallachia League AU. Just something to test if I could make it work. Hope you all enjoy! (I’ll also reblog this in the morning since it’s so late right now).

My name is Claude Grey. It was the 22nd of April, 2032.

I had to bring her coffee. That would be the seventh time that day.

        To be fair, it has been a really long day. A very long day. Her Majesty’s Loyal Peacekeeper, Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, had been overseeing one of the largest anti-terrorism crackdowns in half a decade.

        Four werewolf dens in London’s “Full Moon District” had been raided. Producing, amongst other things, forty illegal assault weapons fully-loaded with silver ammunition, a cache of explosives, illegal drugs, illegal anti-surveillance hardware, plans of attack, stakes, crosses. Including their leader, a prodigiously-tall, silver-haired and red-eyed individual who refused to speak no matter the pressure we put on him.

        I’d seen him before, both in and out of work, but I politely held my tongue at the meeting when he and his cohorts were paraded in front of the precinct. The display was all part of the farcical dog-and-pony show to make it look like the city of London, capitol of His Majesty’s great United Kingdom, actually gave two shits about the Mysticals living within her borders. Realistically speaking, these men would be quietly released in the dead of the night in about a month, sans their illegal armaments, and allowed to continue whatever they had planned so long as they don’t get caught and they don’t involve humans.

        Mysticals, of course, being the name collectively assigned by the governments of the United Nations forty years ago to refer to any and all individuals who would formerly be considered supernatural. It included, amongst others, vampires, werewolves, wraiths, zombies, fae, dryads, naiads, centaurs, kappas, djinn, selkies, cyclopes, banshees, and dullahans.

        The majority of normal humans don’t give a damn about any of them, or they favor the more “peaceful” species, the ones who don’t traditionally require feeding on humans.

        Vampires, werewolves, and all of the more “dangerous” ones in the public eye?

        They get spat on. Hated. Hunted.

        Y’know, vampires and werewolves aren’t legally allowed within two kilometers of London’s city center? And that vampire nightclubs and werewolf dens are statistically four times as likely to come under surprise inspection as any other Mystical hangout? Or that murders involving only Mysticals don’t get investigated?

        And it’s not just the United Kingdom, it’s the same everywhere, save for the countries further north. The U.S., Germany, South America. Russia’s the worst.

        Sir Integra is more level-headed than most. All she wants to do is make sure nobody blows anything up.

        So here I was, at nearly midnight, bringing coffee to a woman who’s been running off a mixture of caffeine and sheer force of will for nearly five days. The Loyal Assistant Watchdog to His Majesty’s Loyal Peacekeeper. That’s what they call me. I feel some of the respect people reserve for Sir Integra got rubbed off on me by association.

        I set the cup down on her desk, keeping a cup in my own hands. I had offered to stay behind to fill out paperwork as usual, so my day was running just as long as her own.

        “Here you are, Sir. Yemeni, two-“ I started, but she interrupted me.

        “Yes, yes, two sugars, two spoons of cream, like always. Thank you, Mr. Grey.”

        I nodded dutifully. “Sorry for the interruption, sir. I’ll get back to work.”

        And I had to. There were three three-inch-thick stacks of paperwork on my desk, only half of which had actually been completed. It was all the same paperwork, to be filled in triplicate. One hand-filled copy to be kept on-site, one hand-filled copy to be sent out to His Majesty’s government, and one hand-filled copy to be sent to the headquarters of the Royal Mail Service to be copied and distributed nationwide to all departments of the Royal Counter Mystical Terrorism Service.

        I normally listened to music when I had this much work to do, but I knew Sir Integra would take offense to that. Especially seeing as it was just us here, that evening. Any movement I made out of line would be objected to, and I hoped for a promotion in the future, so I couldn’t afford to have any blemishes on my record.

        Then my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled the thin, encased rectangle from my pocket, as slyly as possible, to see who’s bothering me. The name on the screen catches my eye.

        “Evangeline.”

        “Hm?” Sir Integra looked up from her desk. I realized I said the name out loud. “What was that, Mr. Grey?”

        “It’s a phone call, sir. My, uhhh… My girlfriend. I have to take this.”

        She visibly grimaced. “Fine, Mr. Grey. But I’ll need you to return to work the second you’re done, understood?”

        “Understood, sir.”

        I made my way out into the precinct’s hallway, away from prying ears. I answered the call, keeping my voice low.

        “Look, I’ll have to make it quick. Now what reason could you possibly have for calling me right now?”

        “Is that any way to talk to your girlfriend, Claude?” Her tone of voice was dripping with sarcasm. Her tendency to find things like that out was starting to make me nervous.

        “Okay, ‘Evangeline,’ what’s wrong?”

        She giggled softly behind the phone. “I just wanted to say sorry ahead of time, Claudey-waudey~!”

        My eyes went wide. I growled into the phone. “The fuck did you do?!”

        “You’ll find out soon enough~!” Her singsong-y voice was driving me insane. “I am sorry about all that paperwork, though.”

        “Ugh.” I hung up. The second I did, Sir Integra called me back into her office.

        Plastered all over the television was news about an attack.

        God DAMMIT.

        The Wallachian League, as they called themselves. The newest radical pro-vampire group in the country. They’d made themselves a nuisance for the past couple of years. Graffiti, hacking attempts, distributing their radical fliers amongst the various groups in London and the rest of the UK. Never had they escalated this far.

        A flaming dump truck had been sent into a house in Yorkshire. Not just any house, but the house of a Member of Parliament who was vocally anti-Mystical. The MP and his wife and children had burned alive in their beds.

        “The Wallachian League is claiming full responsibility for this.” Integra talked after minutes of silence. I sigh softly.

        “They say their leader is Dracula himself.”

        “That’s what every vampire group claims. First it was the Tepes Union, then it was the Fangs of Freedom, then it was Count-down to Equality, the ‘Royal Vampiric Rebels,’ even the… Ugh… Vita-Vegan-Vampires. More likely it’s just some overblown narcissistic vampire who sees himself as Drac’s gift to the world.”

                Things were real quiet. For about two weeks.

        Then we got the news. Somehow, someone had gotten a hold of information that the Wallachian League was planning to bomb one or more of the trains leading into one of the U.K.’s power plants. Nobody was sure which one. If it was one of the coal or biomass trains, it would start one hell of a big fire. If it was one of the nuclear trains… I sincerely hoped it wouldn’t be.

        I snuck away to the alley behind the precinct. I had a phone call to make.

        “Evangeline?” I spoke into the phone.

        “Finally worried, Claudey-waudey~?”

        “I know you’ve all been talking about this, but you’re actually going to go through with it?”

        Her voice suddenly became fully serious. The most serious I’ve ever heard her.

        “Why wouldn’t we? You know we’ve got a message to send to them. Vampires aren’t going to let humans kick us around any longer.”

        “No, it’s not that at all. Look, I know you and Lucy can hold your own, just… Please be careful, okay?”

        “The job’s done. We set it up a while ago. I’d be more worried about yourself if I were you.”

        “Wh… Fuck you say?”

        “’Lucy’ found out earlier. Peregrin told us. The Royals have been monitoring all communication in and out of the Service for a long time. They know the both of you have been keeping the heat off of us.”

        “They… They know I’ve been helping you?”

        A different voice came onto the phone. Much deeper, far more serious.

        “Yes. We’ve already extracted Peregrin from Nottinghamshire earlier today. We’re coming to get you. It’s not safe there anymore. Don’t walk. Run.”

        I could hear shouting from inside the precinct. It seemed my phone call at such an inopportune time confirmed their suspicions. I had to go.

        My car wasn’t far away, but I knew it wasn’t going to work. Parked in the small car park under the precinct, they’d lock it down before I could even get in the vehicle. I had to beat a retreat on foot.

        Well, not really a retreat.

        The moment those same shouting voices exited the building, I broke into a sprint. The fastest, nastiest sprint I’ve ever managed in my life. Sir Integra’s voice broke out amongst the crowd.

        “Grey!” Gunshots punctuated her words. “Grey, you traitorous bastard!” More gunshots. “Don’t you run!”

        That wasn’t like her. My “betrayal” had to have seriously pissed her off for the normally-calm woman to just start shooting.

        I suddenly felt a force, like somebody had kicked me in the back, shoving me to the ground. It only stalled me for a second before I was back up and moving again.

        Dodge to the left, around the bollards and cars, under signs and ladders. Bob here, weave there. Use pedestrians as cover. They’re British, they’re not going to try and stop me.

        Every so often I had to stop and let out a few vicious coughs, which I attributed to just being so unaccustomed to moving that fast for any real length of time.

        And I swear, I had to have set some sort of record for on-foot speed. There’s no way I didn’t. Sticking to the back alleyways, I managed to get out of Central London in just a few minutes, still trying to hide from the authorities. But it was getting harder to move, I just couldn’t catch my breath. As I stopped behind a skip, somewhere in one of London’s more run-down areas, I figured out why.

        Investigating the strange, warm wetness running down my back, I moved my hand there. A thick, viscous wetness.

        “Oh ssssssshhhhfuck...”

        When my hand ran up, and felt the sources, I had to bite back a scream as immense pain shot through my body.

        “No… No, no, no… Nonononofucknonono…”

        Three bullet holes. One perfectly on the right side of my body. Right in my lung. The others in random spots in my back. They had scarcely missed my spine, but who knows what poor organs they had pierced. No exit wounds. I started coughing again, mixed with a choked sob or two.

        I couldn’t die here. I just couldn’t. But I also couldn’t risk moving, not with a bullet in my lung and two more god-knows-where.

        More footsteps. Coming closer. There was a soft gasp from a very familiar voice, and a low grunt from another familiar voice.

        I didn’t have to look up to know who it was.

        “Hey, Evan… Sorry. Hey, Seras. Hey, Alucard. I got, uhh… I got a bit messed up, I’m sorry to say.” I let out a pained chuckle. It hurt to laugh.

        To be perfectly honest, I couldn’t hear what they talked about as they conversed amongst themselves. I could vaguely hear Seras’ question, but heard it better once she grabbed my shoulders to demand my attention.

        “I said…” She repeated. “Are. You. A virgin?”

        “What? Oh…” I grumbled softly. “Yeah, of course I am. I’m scarce two years out of uni. Had no time for any of that nonsense.”

        I couldn’t really think straight at the time. Blood loss will do that to a person.

        Alucard piped up, his baritone voice grabbing my attention more easily.

        “It seems you have a choice, then…” He spoke. “Death. Or undeath.”

        Looking up at him, I spoke back. “Something about a Robert Frost poem, right? Two roads diverged in a wood, I took the one less traveled, that’s made all the difference?” I pushed my cracked glasses up on my nose. “I’ll take the road less traveled if that means I get to wake up again, tomorrow.”

        The decision made, they nodded. I felt a pair of glove-covered hands grasp my head and neck, watched through the corner of my eye as Seras opened her fang-filled maw. The last thing I remembered of that day was the sensation of her fangs clamping down on my neck.

  But I woke up again, the next night.

#Hellsing #Hellsing Ultimate #AU #My Writing #Seras Victoria #Alucard #Sir Integra #Integra #Dream

[fapangel]

199 chars, I got cites. I'll stick to actions and militia/cult behavior. The sniper attack on power station citation is you missing my point. Antifa has no weapon stockpiles or military training. The groups law enforcement see as a threat are the militias: "Law Enforcement Assessment of the Violent Extremist Threat". PBS: "armed militia groups surging across nation" Cult stuff: Business Insider:"right-wing-militias-recruit-young-soldiers-on-4chan-2017-5" psychologytoday:"the mind the militias".

Firstoff, pastebin.com is definitely the go-to for things like this -there’s no way anyone can make a cohesive argument in that tiny askbox. Just say “pastebin: and it’ll get you past that “no URLs”filter tumblr imposes. But I can answer these points/sources here: 

Have you heard of the John Brown club? They’rean antifa group - the usual insane anarchists - and they’re showingup at protests carrying loaded weapons. The Phoenix group inthat article made a video of themselves doingrange practice. I believe that qualifies as training, youknow, with those weapons you say they don’t have.What fucking training do you think the right-wingmilitias have besides target shooting and playing paintball in thewoods? In other words, exactly what these people are doing? 

And what the fuck do you mean stockpiles? Bro,I don’t know if you’re aware, but we live in America - you know,that free country? If you want a gun, are over 21,and don’t have a felony conviction on your record, you can walkinto any store, do 5 minutes of paperwork, wait for them to call theFBI background-check database and walk out with a new long gun. It’sthat fuckin simple. And they’re not that expensive either, you canget a decentAR-15 pattern rifle for under $500, easily. Same for ammo -you can easily buy bulk, online. The only state where both of thoseare harder is California, and I imagine that suits the huge mobs ofclub-armed antifa cunts just fine, because semi-auto firearms with large reloadable magazines are the best way to counter thugs that badly outnumber you. Stockpiles? That crazy fuck that shot the hell out of a US Representative and two Capitol police officers was using an SKS, a fucking WWII era Soviet rifle that loads from the top with fucking stripper clips. And look how much damage he did - it’s only pure dumb luck that nobody was killed or mortally wounded. 

... stockpiles?  Just how much do you know about guns? Here’s what I found in literally five goddamned seconds on ammoseek.com - you got $290, a credit card, and a shipping address? There you go, a thousand goddamned rounds of .223 Remington. Want two thousand? Three? Change the number in the “quantity” box.

Stockpiles? 

Anyway, I’m not surprised that PBS and pals are back at their fake news, doing their damnedest to gin up right-wing militias as the real threat even as they reply to attack after violent attack by radical Islamists with hey - not all Muslims! Yes, that is the trend; witness this Atlantic article trying to justify it.  But that’s beside the point. For starters, if you haven’t read my 6,500 word post on left wing vs right wing violence and violent rhetoric, I go into some depth with the whole militia thing there. For all their LARPing in the woods, swaggering and shit-talking, there hasn’t been any significant violence committed by right-wing militias since... forever, considering that Timothy McVeigh was never really part of one - and his attack was twenty-two years ago. Moreover, I cover how his attack - and the attention it drew to the militia movement - sent anywhere from “2/3rds” to “80%” (according to two different militia-affiliated folks being interviewed) scrambling away from them at high speed. Protip - actual terrorist organizations tend to attract attention when they manage huge, spectacular attacks - you know, like how Black Lives Matter is still going strong after multiple ambush attacks on cops? Gee. 

And that brings us to the essential point -  if these militias are really dangerous, and not just a bunch of shit-talking LARPers playing soldier in the woods - then where’s the violence? Again, as I document in that post, the only “cells” they find are a few shitheads talking shit in a bar too close to an FBI informant that eggs them on - one of them even gave them free automatic rifles to shoot, to get them all excited. 

As for this study, it’s a start, but this paper freely and breezily equates “anti-government extremism” with “right-wing extremism,” and that’s a false equivalency - because Antifa are anarcho-communists. Just read their handy-dandy guide to setting up an antifa group, where they call the state their enemy multiple times - as well as cops. Shit, they have a whole section on “state repression.” Also note the bit under “political orientation,” where they openly state - in case there was any doubt - that the majority of their membership in the US are anarchists. In case you weren’t aware, anarchists are, by definition, anti-government extremists. The list on page 4 covers “anti-capitalist violent extremism,” but considering that antifa are anarchists and anti-capitalists - where do they fall in the reporting? Did every agency report them the same? In light of antifa’s own literature (again, that guide) advocating strongly that they not even name their groups and keep their identities secret as long as possible, how accurate is each agencies accounting? Hell, where do right-wing terrorist groups fall on this scale, considering there’s several anti-immigration militias that focus on finding and reporting illegal immigrants? Doesn’t that qualify as racist? Or are they anti-government, considering that anti-government sentiments tend to run pretty strong in groups like that, especially with a black Democrat in office who personally did as much as he could to hamper border control efforts?

Shit, by their own admission on page 4, they defined “Al-Qaeda inspired violent extremism” as “violent extremism inspired by the radical Islamist ideas advocated by al-Qaeda and other like-minded extremist groups,” and every other category with one general example; “violent extremism motivated by any other political, social, or religious concerns, including, but not limited to, anti-government, racist, radical, environmentalist, or anti-capitalist views. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber (Ted Kaczynski,) and the Sikh temple shooter, Wade Michael Page, are examples of ‘other violent extremists.” So they only define one category well, loosely define the others, and then they start standing around characterizing the results with terminology (right wing, left wing) they didn’t even use in the fucking survey? When all those other categories were lumped together into “other violent extremism” in other categories? 

And then there’s other data-sets - one just adds up every every crime committed by “groups or individuals with far-right associations,” (which would include every skinhead robbing a gas station, which they do a lot, because skinheads are dime-store hoods almost by definition,) and the well defined report - focusing on premeditated plots by individuals or groups that rise to the level of attempted or actual domestic terrorism,” has a whopping total of... 34 incidents listed in 14 years, and is published by the Anti-Defamation League, which is a fucking activist group, not academics, or law enforcement. Wew lad. The Global Terrorism database is better - more data, and a good definition of qualifying incidents - but it’s only being compared to Islamic extremist terrorist attacks in the US, not left wing domestic terrorism, which is what we’re discussing here. 

Bruh, this is some pretty rough shit, here - all twelve pages of it. Especially that bit at the end where they make a claim about how law enforcement agencies see “right wing terrorism” (a phrase used nowhere in their survey to said law enforcement agencies) as a bigger threat in the city than in rural areas. Yeah, dense urban areas, which overwhelmingly vote Democrat, as anyone who’s seen a county-by-county electoral map can tell you, are the hotbeds of right-wing militias? 

Bruh. Bruh. 

But, listen, you’re actually doing your fucking homework here, which is more than most assholes can say, so lemme help you. The FBI is a great resource here - not only do they publicly publish huge annual reports on all sorts of categories of violence, (law enforcement officers killed and assaulted, general crime stats, hate crime stats, etc,) but they watch fucking everyone. There is no group too big or too small for them to not worry about - they’re basically a domestic surveillance agency. That’s why you have agents going out of their way to hand out automatic rifles to a trio of knuckle-dragging rednecks to egg them on till they can arrest them - these guys have time and resources to spare, apparently. They watch everyone - and they cover them, too, with published reports. I’ve read their reports on motorcycle gangs, and in researching that big post on violence, I found (and used) their public information on the “Sovereign Citizen” movement, which is definitely right-wing. While we’re at it, here’s their page on anarchist extremism. Note that page is out of date, though: 

For today’s generation of American anarchist extremists, the rioting that disrupted the 1999 World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle is the standard by which they measure “success”—it resulted in millions of dollars in property damage and economic loss and injuries to hundreds of law enforcement officers and bystanders. But fortunately, they haven’t been able to duplicate what happened in Seattle… 

LOL HAMBURG. But you get my point - the FBI watches everyone, even esoteric groups like anti/pro abortion “activists” that get a little out of hand. So the FBI is an excellent primary source to go to - certainly better than another PBS hit piece which is also regurgitating data from the “Anti-Defamation League” and making claims of “thousands” of people flooding to the Sovereign Citizen movement, without citing any source at all. Especially when they started in on how dangerous sovereign citizens are! As I noted in my big effortpost (see that for the links,) Sovereign Citizens managed to kill six police officers since the year 2000 - but twenty officers have been ambushed and murdered in 2016 alone, with multiple attacks committed by black people acting on black separatist/revolutionary rhetoric, including the Dallas shooting (killing five and wounding nine) and the Baton Rouge shooting nobody seems to have heard about (killing three and wounding three.) The latest ambush murder of a police officer in New York was similarly motivated - I haven’t even counted the ambush killings of cops in 2017 yet. But yeah, man, the fuckin right wing millitias are the real threat! Hooooo boy, how fucking hard can they shill? 

Anyway, here’s the FBI’s resources page, complete with all their copious reports in .pdf format, including several on terrorism related topics. I’ll bet $5 you can make a better argument than fuckin PBS with just what you find here. I’d also track down the sources cited in that 12 page “paper” you linked and read them yourself, see what you can get out of them. That should be a good start, at least. 

[marymosley]

Mary Trump Releases Recording Of Trump Sister As Source For SAT Allegation

We previously discussed whether the niece of President Donald Trump, Mary Trump, committed defamation in her recent tell-all book with a passage claiming that President Trump used a surrogate to take his SAT exam to gain entrance to the Penn’s Wharton School. Mary Trump has been hit by criticism that the person identified as fraudulently taking the test had not even met Donald Trump until after he started taking classes at Penn, according to his widow. In response, Mary Trump released a secret recording of President Donald Trump’s sister, retired federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry (left), The recording does contain the allegation and the question is whether it is enough legally if indeed the story was false.

As a threshold matter, some have asked if Mary Trump could be prosecuted for such surveillance without the consent of her aunt.  In New York, taping with the consent of one party is not considered “wiretapping”:

“Wiretapping” means the intentional overhearing or recording of a telephonic or telegraphic communication by a person other than a sender or receiver thereof, without the consent of either the sender or receiver, by means of any instrument, device or equipment.

The answer is that it is not a crime, just crass.  You do not go to jail for being crass in a one-party consent state.  Even without knowing that she was being recorded, Barry expressed concern that she was “talking too freely” but then again she was talking privately with her niece. Right?

It is a truly rotten thing to do to a family member, but this family is not exactly the Waltons. Indeed, Mary seems to show the same consequentialism or relative morality that she ascribes to her uncle.

The recording is devastatingly blunt and embarrassing. Judge Trump responded to the comment by her brother that he might have to send her to the border to deal with all of the immigration issues. Barry was is recorded saying “All he wants to do is appeal to his base. He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”  She goes on lament President Trump’s penchant for lying: “The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy shit.” She notes that “he doesn’t read” and lacks any sense of compassion or comprehension: “It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel.”

It also appears that his niece fits much of the same bill.

Now for the torts question. The SAT allegation appears to have been raised without prompting by Barry who was explaining how she got President Trump into college: “He was a brat . . . I did his homework for him” . . . “I drove him around New York City to try to get him into college.” Then she said this:  “He went to Fordham for one year [actually two years] and then he got into University of Pennsylvania because he had somebody take the exams.”

Mary Trump responds “No way! He had somebody take his entrance exams?” Barry then confirms it and says “SATs or whatever … That’s what I believe. I even remember the name.” She identified that person as Joe Shapiro.

Mary Trump then writes the following in her book:

“Donald worried that his grade point average, which put him far from the top of the class, would scuttle his efforts to get accepted. To hedge his bets he enlisted Joe Shapiro, a smart kid with a reputation for being a good test taker, to take his SATs for him. That was much easier to pull off in the days before photo IDs and computerized records. Donald, who never lacked for funds, paid his buddy well.”

As noted earlier, the problem with this account is that Shapiro, who died of cancer in 1999, met Trump at the University of Pennsylvania, at least according to his family. His widow, former tennis champion Pam Shriver, was outraged by the allegation against her late husband who she said was known as a person of the highest integrity.

Let assume for the purposes of tort analysis that the story is untrue.  Would the secret recording meet that standard for defamation?

When it comes to the Shapiro family, there is no risk of a defamation lawsuit. That raises the issue of “defaming the dead” and a common law doctrine. The common law rule is that “you cannot defame the dead,” which of course means in practical terms that you can defame the dead. Once again, I have long been a critic of that rule, here.  Publishers and movie producers often wait for figures to die to have full license to defame them with no recourse to the family.  As I said in 2007:

“Indeed, while most people are raised not to speak ill of the dead, the law fully supports those who do. Under the common-law rules governing defamation, a reputation is as perishable as the person who earned it. It is a rule first expressed in the Latin doctrine actio personalis moritur cum persona (“a personal right of action dies with the person”). The English jurist Sir James Stephen put it more simply in 1887, “The dead have no rights and can suffer no wrongs.” In other words, you’re fair game as soon as you die — even if writers say viciously untrue things about you and your life.”

The current controversy highlights the unfairness and harm caused by this common law rule.

However, President Trump could sue.  The standard for defamation for public figures and officials in the United States is the product of a decision decades ago in New York Times v. Sullivan. President Trump would have to prove that his niece had “actual malice” where she had actual knowledge of the falsity of a statement or showed reckless disregard whether it was true or false.  The failure to confirm these facts of when the two men first met would be a compelling claim despite the high burden created by the Supreme Court.

But she had a source.  Not only did Judge Barry say that this was a fact but that she had personal knowledge of the scheme. Mary Trump then confirmed that there was a “Shapiro” who was at Penn and friends with President Trump. Is this enough?

Most newspapers require at least two sources for such an allegation.  Mary Trump had only one. However, this was a close family member claiming personal involvement in his education. Yet, she does not state that she was personally involved in this scheme. She recalls a common name and says that Trump “had somebody” take the exam.  That would not appear first-hand knowledge or direct involvement by Barry. Yet, the book states it as a fact without even saying that this was according to one witness or rumor.

Under these circumstances, most courts would likely let this go to a jury to determine if Mary Trump showed reckless disregard in relying on one source without personal knowledge.

President Trump has not pursued his signature litigious approach to this publication.  There is good reason to be cautious. First, “truth is a defense to defamation.” Thus, Mary Trump would be allowed full discovery to prove that, regardless of her lack of sourcing beyond Barry, the statement was true. Second, there may be further sources available to support Barry’s account or Barry herself may have more to share.

Notably, at the end of the article, Mary Trump notes that Barry has never spoken to her since the book and “if she never contacted me, and I think that’s fair. I understand why she would not want to.” That may be the most objectively true point of the entire affair.

Mary Trump Releases Recording Of Trump Sister As Source For SAT Allegation published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/