🔥 The Biden Raid roundup.

[herb749]

But his lawyers had weeks to clear it out. Then gave the FBI the okay to go in to find nothing.

 

[GURPS]

Dozens of Mar-a-Lago staff, from servers to aides, are subpoenaed in classified documents probe​

On Thursday, Trump’s communications aide Margo Martin, who worked in the White House and then moved with Trump to Florida, appeared before the grand jury in Washington, DC. One of special counsel Jack Smith’s senior-most prosecutors was involved in the interview.

Martin, who is among a small group of former White House advisers who have remained employed by Trump after he left office, declined to answer any questions when approached by a CNN reporter.

Smith has sought testimony from a range of people close to Trump – from his own attorneys who represent him in the matter to staffers who work on the grounds of Mar-a-Lago, including a housekeeper and restaurant servers, sources said.

The staffers are of interest to investigators because of what they may have seen or heard while on their daily duties around the estate, including whether they saw boxes or documents in Trump’s office suite or elsewhere.

“They’re casting an extremely wide net – anyone and everyone who might have seen something,” said one source familiar with the Justice Department’s efforts.

For instance, federal investigators have talked to a Mar-a-Lago staff member seen on security camera footage moving boxes from a storage room with Trump aide Walt Nauta, who has already spoken with investigators.

Many of the Mar-a-Lago staffers are being represented by counsel paid for by Trump entities, according to sources and federal elections records.

 

[GURPS]

Joe Biden’s White House Involved in Raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Residence​

On August 8, 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided Mar-a-Lago on the grounds of retrieving alleged classified documents. According to the establishment media, Biden administration officials were “stunned” to hear of the unprecedented action. The Archives also claimed that it had “not been involved in the DOJ investigation.”

But documents show the FBI obtained access to the records through a “special access request” from the Biden White House on behalf of the DOJ, contradicting what the Archives told Congress, America First Legal revealed Monday:

Notably, despite the Archives’ claim that it had “not been involved in the DOJ investigation,” the documents show that the Archives’ official responsible for administering all access requests for Presidential records, John Laster, was involved in preparing the 15 boxes for FBI review as late as August 23, 2022:

On October 25, 2022, Acting Archivist Wall wrote to then-Ranking Members James Comer and Jim Jordan, claiming “NARA received the 15 boxes from President Trump on January 18, 2022, and then discovered that they contained classified national security information. Shortly after the discovery, NARA consulted with its Office of Inspector General (OIG), which operates independently of NARA. As DOJ has disclosed publicly in court filings, NARA’s OIG subsequently referred the matter to DOJ on February 9, 2022.”
If the OIG acted independently in making a referral to the FBI, then Mr. Laster would not have involved himself in the FBI’s review of the 15 boxes in his capacity as the Director of the White House Liaison Division “responsible for all access requests for Presidential records.” Similarly, the FBI affidavit before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida that provided the probable cause for the issuance of a search warrant against Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022, stated, “[on February 9, 2022] the Special Agent in Charge of NARA’s Office of the Inspector General sent the NARA Referral via email to DOJ.” However, the evidence is that the Biden White House and the Department of Justice coordinated to obtain the Trump records, and perhaps create a pretext for a law enforcement raid, by way of a “special access request.”

“The special access statute authorizes special access requests to an incumbent president only when the records in question are needed for ‘the conduct of current business’ of the White House,” America First Legal explained. “Providing documents to the DOJ for purposes of a criminal investigation is not the ‘current business’ of the White House.”

 

[GURPS]

BIDEN BUSTED – Removed President Trump’s Executive Privilege in Order to Raid Mar-a-Lago to Cover-Up His Own Illegal Possession of Classified Docs​

Earlier this week we found out that Biden was in on the unprecedented, unnecessary and unlawful raid on President Trump’s iconic home Mar-a-Lago.

Now we know that Biden was totally behind the raid because he had to remove President Trump’s executive privilege so the raid could occur. Only Biden could do that.

Right after the illegal raid on Mar-a-Lago, Attorney Mike Davis went on FOX News. He pointed out that the raid was unprecedented, unnecessary, and unlawful. President Trump had the Presidential Records Act that allowed him to take whatever documents he wanted, classified or not, with him to Mar-a-Lago when he left the White House.

 

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The raid — which took place on Aug. 8, 2022 — was reportedly aimed at retrieving “any document Trump ever saw, read, or created for the entirety of his four years as commander-in-chief.” Due to the unprecedented nature of the Biden DOJ conducting a raid on a former president and a potential 2024 rival, House Judiciary Republicans sent letters to Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and then-White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain demanding records pertaining to “the execution of a search warrant” and “the decision to seek a search warrant” for Trump’s estate. The affidavit released by the FBI later that month justifying the agency’s warrant application to raid Trump’s Florida residence was nearly all redacted.

In November, the DOJ appointed U.S. Attorney Jack Smith as a special counsel to investigate whether Trump violated federal laws related to the handling of presidential records.

The Judiciary Committee “previously requested information and documents related to the FBI’s raid on President Trump’s residence and its subsequent investigation,” Jordan’s letter to Garland reads. “Because you have not provided this information, and in light of your appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel, we write to request an unredacted copy of the memorandum outlining the scope of Mr. Smith’s probes regarding President Trump and any supporting documentation related to his appointment as special counsel.”

Jim Jordan Demands DOJ Forfeit Docs On The FBI's Trump Raid

Jim Jordan sent a letter to AG Merrick Garland demanding documents related to the DOJ's special counsel investigation into Donald Trump.

thefederalist.com

 

[GURPS]

First, the Miami Field Office did not conduct the search. Mr. D’Antuono testified that FBI headquarters decided to assign the execution of the search warrant to the Washington Field Office despite the location of the search happening in the region of the Miami Field Office.

Mr. D’Antuono said he had “absolutely no idea” why the decision was made and asked why the Miami Field Office was not spearheading the case.

He noted that the bureau “learned a lot of stuff from [the] Crossfire Hurricane” probe of Trump-Russia collusion, such as “that the [FBI] Headquarters does not work the investigation, it is supposed to be the field offices working the investigations.”

The FBI‘s response to the May 2023 report of Special Counsel John Durham, who investigated the FBI‘s pursuit of Trump-Russia collusion, was that investigations should be run out of the field and not from Washington.

Mr. D’Antuono also told the committee that the Justice Department did not assign a U.S. Attorney’s Office to investigate the classified documents matter at Mar-a-Lago. He explained that he “didn’t understand why there wasn’t a US Attorney assigned” and “raised this concern a lot with” Department officials because this was out of the ordinary.

The former FBI official said that he “never got a good answer” and was told that the National Security Division would handle this matter — with Jay Bratt, who leads the department’s counterintelligence division, as the lead prosecutor on the case.

FBI official in charge of Mar-a-Lago raid had strong misgivings about the operation

A senior FBI official involved in planning the raid of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence told Congress two days ago he had strong reservations about the operation and the investigation.

www.washingtontimes.com

 

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Yesterday, Newsweek — bless them — was the only corporate media platform to cover a shocking story broken by stalwart independent journalist and legal analyst Julie Kelly, with this dramatic and infuriating headline:





While we’ve all been distracted by the mad gutter fireworks in Merchan’s Manhattan joke of a p*rnopgraphic Soviet show-trial, much more momentous things have been happening down in Florida, where Federal Judge Cannon has ordered a lot of government documents to be unsealed and unredacted.

One document unsealed yesterday was the FBI’s "operations order” for the agency’s execrable, banana-republic-style Mar-a-Lago raid. The Operations Order included a long "policy statement" regarding the "use of deadly force," which provided in part: "Law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary."

So it’s going to be like that.

The language wasn’t boilerplate, or at least, it wasn’t just boilerplate. The Operations Order also required attaching a medic to the search team, and even included a map and instructions to the nearest trauma center, presumably for people who got shot during the raid. The small army of FBI agents — 37 of them — was armed, and was also ordered to conceal their weapons and dress undercover, increasing the palpable risks of confusion and an ‘unfortunate accident.’

Grassroots reactions to yesterday’s disclosure were (and still are) incandescent. Julie Kelley demanded, “What country is this?” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), angrily tweeted “The Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Pres Trump and gave the green light.” Social media influencer Tim Pool opined in outrage, “This was either an attempt to kill Trump or incite civil war, maybe both.”

The media machine responded promptly, coolly arguing that the FBI was only following “standard procedure:”





I’m not an expert on FBI criminal procedure. But completely coincidentally, I once sued a city for excessive force over a militarized SWAT raid against my high-end commercial real-estate brokerage client. Not only were my clients completely innocent — they were never even charged — but the raid was just a document search, like the Mar-a-Lago raid, that could easily have been handled using an investigatory subpoena.





Here’s my hot take: The FBI’s “standard procedure” argument stinks. There was nothing normal about the Mar-a-Lago raid. It wasn’t like the FBI was raiding a Harlem crack house. The FBI was raiding a high-end luxury property secured by the Secret Service where the most recent former President lives with no intent to arrest anybody. The FBI knew that people with guns would be there — Secret Service agents — and yet proceeded with its “surprise” raid in undercover clothing.

It is also difficult to credit the lethal “boilerplate” to simple negligence. The layers of required approvals ran all the way up to Grandma Garland herself. Under no circumstances should deadly force have been authorized. The Secret Service should have had prior notice. The agents should have been unarmed to exclude any possibility of an accident.

As I said, based on the limited amount we know, it stinks. The already historic raid on a former president by his campaign opponent just became even more historic and disgraceful.

☕️ DEADLY FORCE ☙ Wednesday, May 22, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Trump trial rests and heads toward closings; FBI's shoot-to-kill orders; Lobster update; aging Klaus decamps from WEF's 15-minute city; extreme hail; solar records shattered; good Portland news; more.

www.coffeeandcovid.com

 

[GURPS]

Biden’s FBI Justified Its Deadly Force Policy in Mar-a-Lago Raid Because of “Life Threatening” Kitchen Utensils, Resort Gym Equipment​

Judge Aileen Cannon last Tuesday unsealed numerous motions related to Jack Smith’s classified documents case against Trump.

One filing revealed Biden’s FBI authorized the use of deadly force during their raid on Mar-a-Lago authorized by US Attorney General Merrick Garland in August 2022.

Armed FBI agents were prepared to confront Trump!!


“Should FPOTUS [Trump] arrive at MAL [Mar-a-Lago], FBI MM EM and OSCs will be prepared to engage with FPOTUS and USSS Security Team,” the document read. “Should USSS provide resistance or interfere with FBI timeline or accesses, FBI MM EM will engage with [redacted] and [redacted] will engage with USSS POC’s per existing liaison relationships.”

“Law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force only when necessary, that is, when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person,” the document read.

 

[Kyle]

DAMN THOSE dastardly Assault Tongs, Semi-Automatic Spatulas and Silenced Potato Mashers!





Just the kind of things only the Police, Military and THE IRON CHEF should have.

 

[Kyle]

 

[GURPS]

 

[GURPS]

Steven D’Antuono, now retired, was then chief of the Washington bureau office for the FBI, and he wanted a conciliatory and less-than-hostile approach to repossessing the files at Mar-a-Lago. The funny part about this meeting was that the main narrative used by the DOJ to storm Trump’s Florida residence was over national security concerns. The house was guarded by the Secret Service. The files were in a secure location.

In D’Antuono’s mind, there was no need to execute a storm-the-Bastille-like operation. Everyone at this meeting knew their careers were on the line, along with the severe political ramifications if things went sideways. It’s also where the FBI stumbled upon the DOJ’s main aim against the former president regarding the files, the raid, and how to catalog the legal documentation for a judge to sign off on the search. Trump would need to be accused of committing a crime, one that could bar him from political office [emphasis mine]:

On Aug. 1, 2022, senior Justice Department and FBI officials gathered on the seventh floor of the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.,

[…] The DOJ and FBI officials shared the same feeling about the case: dread. After the National Archives repeatedly requested that Trump return the documents, some officials assumed Trump would simply hand over the materials. When he didn’t, all of them saw no good options.

“You know what the reaction was in the department?” recalled a former FBI official involved in the case who asked not to be named. “We were like, ‘Oh crap, we don’t want any part of this. The real enemies are Russia and China.’”

[…] D’Antuono, though, was concerned about the approach of the DOJ team investigating Trump, which [Jay] Bratt led. “Jay was being a little overly aggressive,”

D’Antuono recalled. “The aggressiveness that was there, from day one.”

D’Antuono said that Bratt’s behavior may have been fueled by the extraordinarily high-profile nature of the case. “This is a huge case. It’s the former president,”

D’Antuono said. “Was some of it due to ambition? Jay has been an attorney for a long time. This is the case of the century.”

In a less divisive era in American politics, personal political donations might have drawn less attention. It was generally accepted that career DOJ and FBI officials could put their personal politics aside and investigate any elected official, Republican or Democrat, in a fair and fact-based manner.

[…] As the meeting dragged on, the discussion grew increasingly heated. Bratt raised his voice several times. When D’Antuono asked if prosecutors now considered Trump the subject of the investigation, Bratt shot back, “What does that matter?” but didn’t answer the question.

FBI officials from the Washington field office were in open conflict with Bratt and other DOJ prosecutors.

D’Antuono, convinced that a consensual search could end the standoff, stood his ground. He believed that they could negotiate with Trump’s lawyer, Evan Corcoran, a former federal prosecutor, and reach an agreement for a voluntary search.

DOJ officials and senior FBI officials rejected the idea. They said that Trump and Corcoran had already received a subpoena and been repeatedly asked to return the documents.

D’Antuono dug in and said he would only have his agents search Mar-a-Lago if ordered to do so by his FBI superiors.

[…] After the DOJ officials left, the FBI officials spoke alone. D’Antuono and others from the Washington field office expressed a new concern. They noted that the draft search warrant included a potential criminal charge against Trump that they did not recall seeing before: Section 2071 of Title 18.

The law made it illegal for an individual who possesses government documents to “willfully and unlawfully” conceal, remove, mutilate, obliterate, falsify, or destroy them. If a person is convicted of the charge, they shall “be disqualified from holding” any federal office.

“The barring from office charge,” D’Antuono recalled. “People saw that charge as ‘Aha, is that DOJ’s effort to get Trump?’”

Other FBI officials did not consider Bratt to be politically biased. Instead, they feared that Trump’s years of attacks were now impacting the decision-making of current FBI agents.

The irony of this piece is the lengthy passages about bias, conspiracy theories, and hyper-partisanship that these institutions were not meant to soak up in executing their function as law enforcement and investigative bodies. And yet, there’s no bias within the halls of the DOJ, and everyone is level-headed when we know that’s a lie. DOJ officials doctored or outright withheld exculpatory evidence when securing illegal FISA spy warrants against Trump campaign officials like Carter Page. The FBI spied on Trump’s campaign—literally—via Crossfire Hurricane. The FBI/DOJ is not meant to navigate partisan political waters; they’re stirring the pot. The aversion to calling out the hacks in these departments is also painful to read.

Here's Where FBI Officials Realized What Could Be the DOJ's Goal in Raiding Mar-a-Lago

townhall.com