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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 2 years

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Former President Donald Trump and his team have spent days since the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago trying to assemble a "team of respected lawyers" but keep getting rejected, according to The Washington Post.

"Everyone is saying no," a prominent Republican lawyer told the outlet.

Trump is scrambling to find an experienced team of attorneys to defend him amid mounting legal crises. The Justice Department is investigating him under the Espionage Act after he took classified records, including some labeled "top secret," to his Mar-a-Lago residence. He also faces legal scrutiny in the DOJ's investigation into the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot, as well as a state civil probe in New York and a Fulton County, Ga., criminal investigation into his efforts to overturn his loss in the state.

Jon Sale, a former Watergate prosecutor who is now a prominent Florida defense attorney, told the Post he turned Trump down last week.

"You have to evaluate whether you want to take it," he said. "It's not like a DUI. It's representing the former President of the United States — and maybe the next one — in what's one of the highest-visibility cases ever."

Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich defended the quality of the former President's legal team, noting that it also includes former federal prosecutors Evan Corcoran, who represented former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in his losing battle against the DOJ, and James Trusty, who was behind Trump's letter threatening a highly dubious defamation lawsuit against CNN for describing his election lies as lies.

"The President's lead counsel in relation to the raid of his home, Jim Trusty and Evan Corcoran, have decades of prosecutorial experience and have litigated some of the most complex cases in American history," Budowich told the Post. "President Trump is represented by some of the strongest attorneys in the country, and any suggestion otherwise is only driven by envy."

While Corcoran and Trusty submitted filings in the case, Trump's other attorneys have been tasked with making his case to the public in media appearances.

The most visible Trump attorney has been Christina Bobb, a former anchor at the right-wing outlet OAN, where she pushed election conspiracy theories that got the network sued by defamation by Dominion Voting Systems. Bobb's federal legal experience is largely limited to a "handful of trademark infringement cases on behalf of CrossFit" while she worked for a law firm in San Diego, according to the Post. Bobb has already undermined Trump's baseless claim that the FBI may have "planted" evidence during the search while no one was looking, revealing that Trump and his family were able to watch the entire raid through CCTV.

Trump's other Florida-based lawyer is Lindsey Halligan, a Florida insurance lawyer that handles residential and commercial claims but has never handled a federal case.

Trump's other attorney in the documents investigation is Alina Habba, who has a small practice near Trump's Bedminster, N.J., golf club. She previously worked as general counsel at a parking garage company. Habba has also represented Trump in his dubious lawsuits against the New York Times, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and his niece, Mary Trump.

The New York Times' Maggie Haberman noted that this is Trump's seventh or eighth legal team since he became President.

"Finding a new one has been a challenge amid his desire to treat this as a short term PR issue as opposed to a longer term legal one," she wrote.

The New York Times reported last week that one of Trump's lawyers signed a statement in June certifying that Trump had returned all classified documents to the National Archives after a grand jury subpoena was issued in the case. Investigators subsequently learned from inside sources that there were still classified documents at the resort. It's unclear which of Trump's attorneys signed the document.

"You get these guys who just live to be around him, and mistakes get made," an unnamed attorney told the Post. "These guys just want to make him happy."

"Either the attorney acted in good faith on what turned out to be false factual representations made by Mr. Trump or someone else communicating on his behalf, in which case Mr. Trump or his proxy would have criminal jeopardy for false statements or obstruction of justice, or the attorney knowingly gave false assurances to the government," David Laufman, the former head of the DOJ's counterintelligence division, told the Post. "And it's hard to believe that a lawyer knowingly would have lied to the government about the continued presence of classified documents."

Trump, who has faced myriad legal scandals from two impeachments to local criminal investigations, has repeatedly struggled to find elite attorneys to represent him.

"In olden days, he would tell firms representing him was a benefit because they could advertise off it. Today it's not the same," former Trump lawyer-turned-critic Michael Cohen told the Post. "He's also a very difficult client in that he's always pushing the envelope, he rarely listens to sound legal advice, and he wants you to do things that are not appropriate, ethically or legally."

Another attorney recalled Trump's legal team urging him to avoid tweeting about the Mueller investigation early in his presidency only to see a tweet about it before they even got to the end of the White House driveway. "Several people said Trump was nearly impossible to represent and that it would be unclear if they would ever get paid," the Post reported.

"This is not good," one Trump confidant told the outlet. "Something big is going to pop. Somebody needs to be in charge."

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gwydionmisha · 2 years

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#DOJ Counterintelligence Section #David Laufman #Donald Trump #National Security #News

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browsethestacks · 7 months

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Blacksad

Art by...

1) Juanjo Guarnido

2) Eric Canete

3) Tim Sale

4) Francesco Francavilla

5) Matthieu Lauffray

6) David Petersen

7) Juan Diaz Canale

8) Alex Medellin

9) Derek Laufman

10) Juanjo Guarnido

#Comics #Bandes Dessinées #Blacksad #Juanjo Guarnido #Francesco Francavilla #Tim Sale #Eric Canete #Alex Medellin #David Peterson #Derek Laufman #Juan Diaz Canale #Art #Noir #Detectives

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manitat · 3 months

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Derek Laufman: Buck Dancer

#derek laufman #buck dancer #larry david

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smashpages · 2 years

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Sunday Comics | 24/7 Comictober Fest

Check out recent online comics from Melanie Gillman, Ryan Cody, David Lopez and more.

#webcomics #sunday comics #melanie gillman #ryan cody #david lopez #derek laufman #steve lewis

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leupagus · 2 years

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Look,

As I said on twitter, most of the time I post stuff on social media to talk about fandom in one way or another, but for my American peeps I hope you're paying attention to today's news because it is uh VERY VERY BAD:

FBI searched Trump’s home to look for nuclear documents and other items, sources say

(Article under cut in case this gets paywalled)

Classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought in a search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence on Monday, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Experts in classified information said the unusual search underscores deep concern among government officials about the types of information they thought could be located at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and potentially in danger of falling into the wrong hands.

The people who described some of the material that agents were seeking spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. They did not offer additional details about what type of information the agents were seeking, including whether it involved weapons belonging to the United States or some other nation. Nor did they say if such documents were recovered as part of the search. A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Justice Department and FBI declined to comment.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said he could not discuss the investigation on Thursday. But in an unusual public statement at the Justice Department, he announced he had personally authorized the decision to seek court permission for a search warrant.

Garland spoke moments after Justice Department lawyers filed a motion seeking to unseal the search warrant in the case, noting that Trump had publicly revealed the search shortly after it happened.

“The public’s clear and powerful interest in understanding what occurred under these circumstances weighs heavily in favor of unsealing,” the motion says. “That said, the former President should have an opportunity to respond to this Motion and lodge objections, including with regards to any ‘legitimate privacy interests’ or the potential for other ‘injury’ if these materials are made public.”

Material about nuclear weapons is especially sensitive and usually restricted to a small number of government officials, experts said. Publicizing details about U.S. weapons could provide an intelligence road map to adversaries seeking to build ways of countering those systems. And other countries might view exposing their nuclear secrets as a threat, experts said.

One former Justice Department official, who in the past oversaw investigations of leaks of classified information, said the type of top-secret information described by the people familiar with the probe would probably cause authorities to try to move as quickly as possible to recover sensitive documents that could cause grave harm to U.S. security.

“If that is true, it would suggest that material residing unlawfully at Mar-a-Lago may have been classified at the highest classification level,” said David Laufman, the former chief of the Justice Department’s counterintelligence section, which investigates leaks of classified information. “If the FBI and the Department of Justice believed there were top secret materials still at Mar-a-Lago, that would lend itself to greater ‘hair-on-fire’ motivation to recover that material as quickly as possible.”

The Monday search of Trump’s home by FBI agents has caused a political furor, with Trump and many of his Republican defenders accusing the FBI of acting out of politically motivated malice. Some have threatened the agency on social media.

As Garland spoke Thursday, police in Ohio were engaged in a standoff with an armed man who allegedly tried to storm the Cincinnati office of the FBI. The man was killed by police later that day; authorities said negotiations had failed.

State and federal officials declined to name the man or describe a potential motive. However, a law enforcement official identified him as Ricky Shiffer.

According to another law enforcement official, agents are investigating Shiffer’s possible ties to extremist groups, including the Proud Boys, whose leaders are accused of helping launch the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

A person using Shiffer’s name on TruthSocial, Trump’s social media site, posted a “call to arms” message shortly after Monday’s FBI search became public.

“People, this is it,” the message reads. “Leave work tomorrow as soon as the gun shop/Army-Navy store/pawn shop opens, get whatever you need to be ready for combat. We must not tolerate this one. They have been conditioning us to accept tyranny and think we can’t do anything for 2 years. This time we must respond with force.”

The Washington Post could not confirm whether the account actually belonged to Shiffer.

In his statement on Thursday, Garland defended FBI agents as “dedicated, patriotic public servants” and said he would not “stand by silently when their integrity is unfairly attacked … Every day they protect the American people from violent crime, terrorism and other threats to their safety while safeguarding our civil rights. They do so at great personal sacrifice and risk to themselves. I am honored to work alongside them.”

It was Garland’s first public appearance or commentsince agents executed the warrant at Mar-a-Lago Club, taking about a dozen boxes of material after opening a safe and entering a padlocked storage area. The search was one of the most dramatic developments in a cascade of legal investigations of the former president, several of which appear to be growing in intensity.

The investigation into the improper handling of documents began months ago, when the National Archives and Records Administration sought the return of material taken to Mar-a-Lago from the White House. Fifteen boxes of documents and items, some of them marked classified, were returned early this year. The archives subsequently asked the Justice Department to investigate.

Former senior intelligence officials said in interviews that during the Trump administration, highly classified intelligence about sensitive topics, including about intelligence-gathering on Iran, was routinely mishandled. One former official said the most highly classified information often ended up in the hands of personnel who didn’t appear to have a need to possess it or weren’t authorized to read it.

That former official also said signals intelligence — intercepted electronic communications like emails and phone calls of foreign leaders — was among the type of information that often ended up with unauthorized personnel. Such intercepts are among the most closely guarded secrets because of what they can reveal about how the United States has penetrated foreign governments.

A person familiar with the inventory of 15 boxes taken from Mar-a-Lago in January indicated that signals intelligence material was included in them. The precise nature of the information was unclear.

The former officials and the other individual spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters.

This spring, Trump’s team received a grand jury subpoena in connection with the documents investigations, two people familiar with the investigation, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details, confirmed to The Post on Thursday. Investigators visited Mar-a-Lago in the weeks following the issuance of the subpoena, and Trump’s team handed over some materials. The subpoena was first reported by Just the News, a conservative media outlet run by John Solomon, one of Trump’s recently designated representatives to the National Archives.

People familiar with the probe have said it is focused on whether the former president or his aides withheld classified or other government material that should have been returned to government custody earlier. The people, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation, said that as authorities engaged in months of discussions on the subject, some officials came to suspect the Trump team was not being truthful.

Pressure had been building for Garland to say something so that the public understands why the Justice Department — and a federal magistrate judge — believed the extraordinary step of executing a search warrant at the home of a former president was necessary. But Garland has stuck with his practice of not discussing ongoing investigations.

“Upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly without fear or favor,” Garland said Thursday. “Under my watch, that is precisely what the Justice Department is doing.”

FBI search of Mar-a-Lago puts Garland in midst of political firestorm

Trump and his allies have refused to publicly share a copy of the warrant, even as they and their supporters have denounced the search as unlawful and politically motivated but provided no evidence to back that up.

Lawyers for the former president can respond to the government’s filing with any objections to unsealing the warrant, leaving it to the judge overseeing the case to decide. He also could publicly release the warrant himself.

The judge ordered the Justice Department to confer with lawyers for Trump and alert the court by 3 p.m. Friday as to whether Trump objects to the unsealing.

After Garland’s appearance, Trump took to his own social media network to again decry the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. But he made no indication of whether he would lodge an objection to the government’s filing.

If made public, the warrant would probably reveal a general description of what material agents were seeking at Mar-a-Lago and what crimes they could be connected to. A list of the inventory that agents took from the property would also be released. Details could be limited, however, particularly if the material collected includes classified documents.

In addition to the anti-law enforcement threats and vitriol on social media sites and elsewhere this week, the furor over the search warrant has led to threats against the judge who approved the warrant request.

The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association — the professional association representing 31,000 federal law enforcement officers and agents — said in a statement Wednesday evening that its agents had received “extreme threats of violence” this week.

“All law enforcement understand their work makes them a target for criminal actors,” wrote the group’s president, Larry Cosme. “However, the politically motivated threats of violence against the FBI this week are unprecedented in recent history and absolutely unacceptable.”

Republicans around Trump initially thought the raid could help him politically, but they are now bracing for revelations that could be damaging, a person familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Jacqueline Alemany, Spencer S. Hsu, Meryl Kornfield and Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.

#I really don't know how to explain how horrifying this is #people have been put to death - literally - for what Trump is alleged to have done #LITERALLY #politics!#I guess!#also I don't want any snarky cynical Takes on 'oh we knew he was a traitor'#you did not know this

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midnightfunk · 2 years

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Don't let him lie to you.

He gets away with that with his stupid minions. Show him America is still smarter than that.

Smarter than him!

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klbmsw · 2 years

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malenipshadows · 2 years

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“FBI searched Tr*mp’s home to look for nuclear documents and other items, sources say,”

The former pres-ident said on social media that he won’t oppose a Justice Dept. request to unseal the search warrant, By Devlin Barrett, Josh Dawsey, Perry Stein, and Shane Harris; The Washington Post. Updated August 12, 2022 at 12:10 a.m. EDT.

Classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought in a search of former president Donald Tr*mp’s Florida residence on Monday [8/08/2022], according to people familiar with the investigation. Experts in classified information said the unusual search underscores deep concern among government officials about the types of information they thought could be located at Tr*mp’s Mar -a-Lago Club and potentially in danger of falling into the wrong hands. The people who described some of the material that agents were seeking spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. They did not offer additional details about what type of information the agents were seeking, including whether it involved weapons belonging to the United States or some other nation. Nor did they say if such documents were recovered as part of the search. A Tr*mp spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. The Justice Department and FBI declined to comment. Attorney General Merrick Garland said he could not discuss the investigation on Thursday [8/11/2022]. But in an unusual public statement at the Justice

Department, he announced he had personally authorized the decision to seek court permission for a search warrant. ... Material about nuclear weapons is especially sensitive and usually restricted to a small number of government officials, experts said. Publicizing details about U.S. weapons could provide an intelligence road map to adversaries seeking to build ways of countering those systems. And other countries might view exposing their nuclear secrets as a threat, experts said. One former Justice Department official, who in the past oversaw investigations of leaks of classified information, said the type of top-secret information described by the people familiar with the probe probably would cause authorities to try to move as quickly as possible to recover sensitive documents that could cause grave harm to U.S. security. “If that is true, it would suggest that material residing unlawfully at Mar -a-Lago may have been classified at the highest classification level,” said David Laufman, the former chief of the Justice Department’s counterintelligence section, which investigates leaks of classified information. “If the FBI and the Department of Justice believed there were top secret materials still at Mar -a-Lago, that would lend itself to greater ‘hair-on-fire’ motivation to recover that material as quickly as possible.” ... It was Garland’s first public appearance or comment since agents executed the warrant at Mar -a-Lago Club, taking about a dozen boxes of material after opening a safe and entering a padlocked storage area. The search was one of the most dramatic developments in a cascade of legal investigations of the former president, several of which appear to be growing in intensity. The investigation into the improper handling of documents began months ago, when the National Archives and Records Administration sought the return of material taken to Mar -a-Lago from the White House. Fifteen boxes of documents and items, some of them marked as classified, were returned early this year. The archives subsequently asked the Justice Department to investigate. Former senior intelligence officials said in interviews that during the Tr*mp administration, highly classified intelligence about sensitive topics, including about intelligence-gathering on Iran, was routinely mishandled. One former official said the most highly classified information often ended up in the hands of personnel who didn’t appear to have a need to possess it or weren’t authorized to read it. [Remainder omitted.]

#report: secret nuclear documents among tr*mp documents cache #report: tr*mp improperly removed classified nuclear documents #search warrant listed classified U.S. nuclear documents #tr*mp stole secret U.S. documents #tr*mp the biggest loser #tr*mp most corrupt U.S. regime #tr*mp is the biggest loser #tr*mp worst U.S. president ever #lock tr*mp up

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extraordinary-heroes · 7 months

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Artist Showcase: David Laufman (Marvel Works)

#david laufman #marvel comics #miles morales #spider-man #spider-gwen #daredevil #rocket raccoon #scorpion #artwork #illustrations #mystique

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bllsbailey · 14 days

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Audit: DNC Covered Biden's Legal Fees Amid Accusations Against RNC for Trump's Fees

Do not throw rocks if you live in a glass house.

Federal Election Commission records obtained by the New York Post reveal that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) used campaign funds to pay for President Biden’s more than $1.5 million in legal expenses during the probe into his mishandling of classified documents.

Advertisement: politicspresumptuous.blogspot.com

The money was utilized to cover the current president’s legal fees and firms during the 13-month special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation, which came to an end in February. Axios was the first to report on the payments.

Hur explained his decision to drop charges against the president in a 388-page report that was made public on February 8th. He stated that Biden would probably present himself as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” at trial, making a conviction improbable.

Additionally, the DNC paid Bob Bauer PLLC $1.05 million. Bob Bauer PLLC is the professional limited liability business owned by top Biden attorney Bob Bauer, who is married to senior White House communications adviser Anita Dunn.

David Laufman, a notable attorney and former Justice Department employee who worked on the investigations into Russian election interference in 2016 and Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state, was hired in part with the help of that funding.

The DNC also sent the Boston legal firm Hemenway & Barnes LLP, where Jennifer Miller, a lawyer for Biden, practices, upwards of $100,000. How much of that money was associated with Miller’s work on the Biden documents case is unknown.

Ironically, Trump has come under fire from Democrat officials and the Biden administration for allegedly using campaign cash to pay his escalating legal bills.

“There is no comparison—the DNC does not spend a single penny of grassroots donors’ money on legal bills, unlike Donald Trump, who actively solicits legal fees from his supporters and has drawn down every bank account he can get his hands on like a personal piggy bank,” DNC spokesperson Alex Floyd said in a statement.

The Biden campaign had also accused Trump of utilizing a massive event that took place in Palm Beach on April 6th to pay for his legal expenditures. The campaign claims that the former president is using “billionaire-reliant funds it has to pay off his various legal fees.”

“We are not spending money on legal bills. We are not hawking gold sneakers or any of that stuff. The money that we are raising, we are going straight to talking to voters,” said Rufus Gifford, the Biden campaign’s finance chair.

Meanwhile, Trump’s team retaliated against the “hypocrisy” of the Biden campaign.

“Joe Biden and the Democrats’ entire campaign against President Trump is based upon lies and hypocrisy—they have repeatedly stated they don’t spend money on Biden’s legal bills while they attack President Trump for having to defend himself from Biden’s witch hunts,” said Trump 2024 national spokesperson Karoline Leavitt. “Come to find out, the DNC paid millions to cover Biden’s legal bills to a law firm run by the husband of top White House staffer Anita Dunn. Apparently, ‘10% for the big guy’ from Hunter wasn’t enough for Crooked Joe to foot his own bill.”

Stay informed! Receive breaking news blasts directly to your inbox for free. Subscribe here. https://www.oann.com/alerts

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sanjosenewshq · 2 years

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Trump Stashed Extremely Delicate China Iran Missile Intel At Mar-A-Lago: Report

Particulars about Iran’s missile program and American intelligence work aimed toward China had been among the many most “extremely delicate” info Donald Trump had stashed at his Mar-a-Lago compound, The Washington Submit reported Friday. Had the intelligence been shared with or acquired by different individuals it might have laid naked U.S. intelligence-gathering strategies. The identities of American spies might have been uncovered and their lives’ endangered, and U.S. intelligence-gathering programs compromised. But the delicate info was saved in a resort that drew lots of of unscreened members and friends to events, fundraisers and wedding ceremony receptions at a facility maintained by unscreened groundskeepers and cleaners. One of many storage areas for paperwork Trump took to Mar-a-Lago from the White Home was reportedly simply accessible close to a pool open to all members. A minimum of one doc seized by the FBI in August describes Iran’s missile program, sources instructed the Submit. Different paperwork reportedly described extremely delicate intelligence work involving China. “The distinctive sensitivity of those paperwork, and the reckless publicity of invaluable sources and strategies of U.S. intelligence capabilities regarding these overseas adversaries, will definitely affect the Justice Division’s willpower of whether or not to cost Mr. Trump or others with willful retention of nationwide protection info underneath the Espionage Act,” David Laufman, a former senior official of the Justice Division, instructed the Submit. Mar-a-Lago has been thought-about a “spy magnet” by intelligence consultants — each throughout and after Trump’s time period as president. “Any competent overseas intelligence service, whether or not these belonging to China, these belonging to Iran, to Cuba, definitely together with Russia are … and had been considering getting access to Mar-a-Lago,” Peter Strzok, former deputy assistant director of counterintelligence on the FBI, stated in a current MSNBC interview. However the scenario is “particularly regarding” due to info within the wake of the FBI confiscation of bins of paperwork — together with categorized and prime secret info — at Trump’s membership concerning the “absolute lack of any management or memorialization of who will get entry to Mar-a-Lago at any given time,” Strzok identified. A sworn affidavit supporting the FBI search indicated that “categorized paperwork had been strewn everywhere in the facility,” stated Strzok. Try the total Washington Submit story right here. Originally published at San Jose News HQ

#San Jose News HQ

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