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To justify the unprecedented raid on a former president's residence and protect the source who revealed the existence of Trump's private hoard, agents went into Trump's residence on the pretext that they were seeking all government documents, says one official who has been involved in the investigation. But the true target was this private stash, which Justice Department officials feared Donald Trump might weaponize.
"They collected everything that rightfully belonged to the U.S. government but the true target was these documents that Trump had been collecting since early in his administration," says the source, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.
The sought-after documents deal with a variety of intelligence matters of interest to the former president, the officials suggest—including material that Trump apparently thought would exonerate him of any claims of Russian collusion in 2016 or any other election-related charges.
When Trump left the White House in January 2021, many of the normal processes of transition were not followed, especially because the president would not admit that he had lost the election or that he would be leaving office. As a result, we now know, some 27 boxes of documents were shipped to Mar-a-Lago by mistake: officials papers under U.S. law, which the National Archives is supposed to take custody of and catalog.
www.newsweek.com
"They collected everything that rightfully belonged to the U.S. government but the true target was these documents that Trump had been collecting since early in his administration," says the source, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.
The sought-after documents deal with a variety of intelligence matters of interest to the former president, the officials suggest—including material that Trump apparently thought would exonerate him of any claims of Russian collusion in 2016 or any other election-related charges.
When Trump left the White House in January 2021, many of the normal processes of transition were not followed, especially because the president would not admit that he had lost the election or that he would be leaving office. As a result, we now know, some 27 boxes of documents were shipped to Mar-a-Lago by mistake: officials papers under U.S. law, which the National Archives is supposed to take custody of and catalog.
FBI Sought Documents Trump Hoarded for Years, Including about Russiagate
The Mar-a-Lago search was specifically intended to recover Donald Trump's personal stash of hidden documents—which officials feared he might "weaponize."
www.newsweek.com
Clem72
Well-Known Member
The right is already going to vote for whoever ends up being the candidate, and the left will not. The middle are likely not going to believe being raided and having 17 boxes of government documents confiscated is a positive indicator of trust in the man, at best they will think he wasn't careful with his documents at worst that he had criminal intent. The middle people are not going to jump to the conclusion that the FBI was out to get Trump.
Old case over audio tapes in Bill Clinton's sock drawer could impact Mar-a-Lago search dispute
When it comes to the National Archives, history has a funny way of repeating itself. And legal experts say a decade-old case over audio tapes that Bill Clinton once kept in his sock drawer may have significant impact over the FBI search of Melania Trump's closet and Donald Trump's personal office.
The case in question is titled Judicial Watch v. National Archives and Records Administration and it involved an effort by the conservative watchdog to compel the Archives to forcibly seize hours of audio recordings that Clinton made during his presidency with historian Taylor Branch.
For pop culture, the case is most memorable for the revelation that the 42nd president for a time stored the audio tapes in his sock drawer at the White House. The tapes became the focal point of a 2009 book that Branch wrote.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington D.C. ultimately rejected Judicial Watch's suit by concluding there was no provision in the Presidential Records Act to force the National Archives to seize records from a former president.
But Jackson's ruling — along with the Justice Department's arguments that preceded it — made some other sweeping declarations that have more direct relevance to the FBI's decision to seize handwritten notes and files Trump took with him to Mar-a-Lago. The most relevant is that a president's discretion on what are personal vs. official records is far-reaching and solely his, as is his ability to declassify or destroy records at will.
"Under the statutory scheme established by the PRA, the decision to segregate personal materials from Presidential records is made by the President, during the President's term and in his sole discretion," Jackson wrote in her March 2012 decision, which was never appealed.
"Since the President is completely entrusted with the management and even the disposal of Presidential records during his time in office, it would be difficult for this Court to conclude that Congress intended that he would have less authority to do what he pleases with what he considers to be his personal records," she added.
The judge noted a president could destroy any record he wanted during his tenure and his only responsibility was to inform the Archives.
As to whether records a president concluded were personal can be forcibly seized after he leaves office, the court concluded it was unreasonable to force NARA to go get the tapes
FBI Sought Documents Trump Hoarded for Years, Including about Russiagate
To justify the unprecedented raid on a former president's residence and protect the source who revealed the existence of Trump's private hoard, agents went into Trump's residence on the pretext that they were seeking all government documents, says one official who has been involved in the investigation. But the true target was this private stash, which Justice Department officials feared Donald Trump might weaponize.
"They collected everything that rightfully belonged to the U.S. government but the true target was these documents that Trump had been collecting since early in his administration," says the source, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.
The sought-after documents deal with a variety of intelligence matters of interest to the former president, the officials suggest—including material that Trump apparently thought would exonerate him of any claims of Russian collusion in 2016 or any other election-related charges.
When Trump left the White House in January 2021, many of the normal processes of transition were not followed, especially because the president would not admit that he had lost the election or that he would be leaving office. As a result, we now know, some 42 boxes of documents were shipped to Mar-a-Lago by mistake: officials papers under U.S. law, which the National Archives is supposed to take custody of and catalog.
Dershowitz: ‘I Voted Against Trump Twice,’ but Mar-a-Lago ‘Was an Improper Search’
“Look, I voted against Trump twice. I’m looking forward to an opportunity to vote against him for a third time, but I will not compromise the Fourth Amendment or the Constitution or the principles I’ve stood for all my life in order to get Trump,” Dershowitz outlined. “This was an improper search. They should have enforced the subpoena. That’s what Merrick Garland said the Justice Department generally does — less intrusive methods.”
“Now, the affidavit, if it’s revealed, may indicate reasons why a search warrant had to be effectuated three days after or two and a half days after it was approved, but right now, the burden of proof is heavily on the government to justify this intrusive search,” he continued. “No, it’s not a raid. It’s a court-authorized intrusive search. But it still has to be justified not only under the letter, but the spirit of the Fourth Amendment.”
Adam Schiff Says AG Garland 'Acted Appropriately' on Trump Raid, Yet Hasn't Received Report He Requested
In this episode of “Adam Schiff being Adam Schiff”…
In the wide, wild world of liberal hypocrisy, there’s nobody better at it than California Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff, whose plethora of smackdowns by facts and reality have become the stuff of legend.
Who can forget the total fool Shifty made out of himself, month after month, eyes bulging as he excitedly trotted out to waiting TV cameras, declaring “smoking gun” after “smoking gun,” all of which, he confidently told us, would once and for all prove beyond doubt Donald Trump did indeed collude with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election? Just one problem: every one of them turned out to be a big fat nothingburger.
The DOJ Official Who Met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago Before FBI Raid Has Deep Russiagate Ties, Associate of Mueller’s ‘Pit Bull’
Jay Bratt played a critical role in preparing the terrain at Mar-a-Lago in June for the FBI raid in August.
“Bratt, the top counterintelligence official at Justice, traveled to Mar-a-Lago in early June and personally inspected the storage facility while interacting with both Trump and one of his lawyers,” Sperry notes. “Trump allowed the three FBI agents Bratt brought with him to open boxes in the storage room and look through them. They left with some documents. After leaving, Bratt made a request to Trump’s lawyer for increased security at the facility and asked to see surveillance footage from the security cameras. The lawyer complied with the requests.”
“Months went by before the Justice Department took the politically explosive step of sending FBI agents unannounced to Trump’s home, seizing documents, photos, and other items not just from the storage facility but from multiple rooms on the property, including the former president’s office,” Sperry adds.
The RealClearInvestigations story draws parallels between the DOJ’s recent “weaponization” of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) against Trump officials and the invocation of the Presidential Records Act (PRA) as a pretext for the FBI raid, despite it being a civil act and not a criminal statute.
It turns out that Bratt is a close associate of David Laufman, who has been dubbed the ‘mastermind’ behind the legal strategy of using FARA to attack political enemies.
In a review of conflicts of interest and political bias at the Department of Justice, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) explicitly listed Nicholas McQuaid as an official of concern.
Michael Sussmann, of course, was recently named by the Durham investigation as having allegedly misled the FBI about the infamous ‘backdoor server‘ to Alfa Bank, which was a claim echoed by Hillary Clinton herself during the 2016 campaign. Sussman had approached the FBI’s general counsel James Baker in a September 2016 meeting with a tip provided in a personal fashion, as opposed to explicitly on behalf of the Clinton campaign that he worked for. The Washington D.C. federal jury acquitted Sussmann in part because it was presumed that some FBI agents knew he was working with the Clinton campaign.
Lisa Monaco, who was President Obama’s top homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, and former chief of staff for prior FBI director Robert Mueller, was deeply aware of the Russiagate operations during the 2016 campaign. She is implicated as one of the Justice Dept. officials to have given the go-ahead to carry out the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago. It has not been independently corroborated what role Maggie Goodlander may have played in the Mar-a-Lago raid.
But more importantly, as reported earlier at Becker News, the direct involvement of Alan Kohler in the FBI investigation of Donald Trump is a red thread to the discredited Russiagate investigation.
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‘Do Any Of Us Really Believe Donald Trump Is Reading Nuclear Secrets At His Bedside?’
“I’m not one to withhold criticism and even make my own side mad,” Crenshaw began. “I want to get to the truth. But I will be honest with you here, this– it’s hard to justify what the Department of Justice did here, in my opinion.”
“Here’s what it really boils down to,” he continued. “It’s not a question that it’s bad to have classified material in a non-SCIF [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility] environment. That’s a non-secret compartmentalized infrastructure there. That’s wrong. But there’s ways to mitigate that, there’s ways to resolve that issue. And I still haven’t seen any evidence that Trump was even asked to give these documents back.”
“He’s been cooperating with them on these issues for a while now, for months. And so, why take it to extreme extent? And I think that’s why you’re seeing so much backlash from Republicans. You’re seeing everyone coalesce. It doesn’t matter what side of the issue they’re on with Trump, we’ve seen a lot coalesce around this one because it does seem unjust and there does seem to be a long history of loss of credibility at the Department of Justice at the hands of Democrats. And I think people are rightful rightfully frustrated about that.”
Trump raid shows that FBI, Justice Department want to decide who can be our president
Stated in the starkest terms, the FBI and the DOJ are now in the business of deciding who shall be eligible to run for office in America. Period. Full Stop.
A simple review of the last few years proves the point.
Without question, well before the 2016 campaign, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton broke the law. She maintained highly classified material, in her home, in an unsecure environment.
No one can debate that. Nor can it be debated that there was no raid of her home, let alone a legal consequence for her behavior.
Hillary even destroyed, via BleachBit, potential evidence arguably under subpoena. She alone decided whether data she had on her computer was subject to the subpoena. ven after that evidence was destroyed, there still was no raid on her home.
Keep in mind, in 2015, General David Petraeus was charged with "unlawfully and knowingly remov[ing] such documents and materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents and materials at unauthorized locations."
Appeals court says DOJ improperly redacted memo to AG Barr on Trump obstruction
This tees up another politically fraught decision for Attorney General Merrick Garland, whose earlier move to appeal the judge’s ruling ordering his department to release the document disappointed Trump critics and prolonged the FOIA battle that was initiated by the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
That earlier appeal followed a May 2021 decision by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who ordered the DOJ to release the legal memo. She reached her decision, she said, after concluding that the DOJ’s privilege claims were not consistent with her own review of the unredacted memo or the timeline revealed by internal emails among top Justice Department officials.
In a scathing 41-page decision, she accused Barr and agency lawyers of creating the misleading impression that the former attorney general had been much more open-minded when weighing whether to recommend obstruction charges against Trump than the actual memo shows.
“The agency’s redactions and incomplete explanations obfuscate the true purpose of the memorandum, and the excised portions belie the notion that it fell to the Attorney General to make a prosecution decision or that any such decision was on the table at any time,” she wrote.
Whatever happened to the story about the nukes? Yeah. Apparently Trump stole valuable nuclear secrets that he was planning to sell to someone. I don't know about you, but this seems like a strange career transition for a real estate tycoon. Should I build a new luxury condominium development in midtown or sell nuclear secrets to Putin? It's a tough call. On one hand, you can make a lot of money legally. On the other, you could be executed for treason.
Of course, the media always picks the most absurd crap to peddle about Trump. So what is the media who invested so much in this psychosis do now? They say, if you dare criticize the raid, you'll be inciting violence against the FBI who are busy doing the Lord's work of sniffing Melania's shoes. I chose the word shoes.
And true. There were notable incitements to violets. There were. Remember, Michael Beschloss tweeted a photo of the Rosenbergs who were executed for selling nuclear secrets to Moscow. It was a tweet that then General Michael Hayden concurred with by adding "sounds about right." That's two major voices not calling out the FBI, but suggesting the execution of Trump.
But the media ignores that incitement, preferring to call out random nutjobs posting threats on message boards. But I get it. You should see the stuff I post on the My Little Pony forums. But if you ever mess with Twilight Spark, I'll kill you.
www.foxnews.com
Of course, the media always picks the most absurd crap to peddle about Trump. So what is the media who invested so much in this psychosis do now? They say, if you dare criticize the raid, you'll be inciting violence against the FBI who are busy doing the Lord's work of sniffing Melania's shoes. I chose the word shoes.
And true. There were notable incitements to violets. There were. Remember, Michael Beschloss tweeted a photo of the Rosenbergs who were executed for selling nuclear secrets to Moscow. It was a tweet that then General Michael Hayden concurred with by adding "sounds about right." That's two major voices not calling out the FBI, but suggesting the execution of Trump.
But the media ignores that incitement, preferring to call out random nutjobs posting threats on message boards. But I get it. You should see the stuff I post on the My Little Pony forums. But if you ever mess with Twilight Spark, I'll kill you.
Greg Gutfeld: The narrative is falling apart
Greg Gutfeld discusses the FBI raid on former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence and some of the political fallout from it on "Gutfeld!"
Judge: Government Hasn’t Proven Trump Search Warrant Affidavit Should Remain Sealed
U.S. government officials haven’t presented sufficient evidence to keep a key document related to the search warrant executed at former President Donald Trump’s home shielded from the public, a federal judge ruled on Aug. 22.
Officials have claimed that an affidavit that convinced U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart to approve the warrant needs extensive redactions to protect FBI agents and witnesses, as well as the ongoing investigation into Trump.
The redactions would leave “very little—nothing of substance,” Jay Bratt, chief of the Department of Justice’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, told Reinhart during a recent hearing.
The government has met its burden of showing that its interests outweigh public access to unsealing the entire affidavit, Reinhart said in the new ruling. But the government hasn’t yet sufficiently shown that portions of the document shouldn’t be made public.
Whatever happened to the story about the nukes? Yeah. Apparently Trump stole valuable nuclear secrets that he was planning to sell to someone. I don't know about you, but this seems like a strange career transition for a real estate tycoon. Should I build a new luxury condominium development in midtown or sell nuclear secrets to Putin? It's a tough call. On one hand, you can make a lot of money legally. On the other, you could be executed for treason.
Of course, the media always picks the most absurd crap to peddle about Trump. So what is the media who invested so much in this psychosis do now? They say, if you dare criticize the raid, you'll be inciting violence against the FBI who are busy doing the Lord's work of sniffing Melania's shoes. I chose the word shoes.
And true. There were notable incitements to violets. There were. Remember, Michael Beschloss tweeted a photo of the Rosenbergs who were executed for selling nuclear secrets to Moscow. It was a tweet that then General Michael Hayden concurred with by adding "sounds about right." That's two major voices not calling out the FBI, but suggesting the execution of Trump.
But the media ignores that incitement, preferring to call out random nutjobs posting threats on message boards. But I get it. You should see the stuff I post on the My Little Pony forums. But if you ever mess with Twilight Spark, I'll kill you.
Greg Gutfeld: The narrative is falling apart
Greg Gutfeld discusses the FBI raid on former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence and some of the political fallout from it on "Gutfeld!"
There's still people who will mention nuclear secrets without any proof. Its just the govt & media throwing a reason out there for people to believe is true.
Alan Dershowitz says every reputable attorney he's spoken with has told him their firms 'won't let them go anywhere near' Trump
"All big-firm lawyers have told me that their firms won't let them do it," Dershowitz said in an interview. "The firms won't let them go near any case involving Trump. These are firms that want to continue to have clients, and they know that if they represent Donald Trump, they'll lose a lot of clients."
Dershowitz spoke from experience.
After he represented Trump in his Senate impeachment trial, Dershowitz said he lost job opportunities and many of his speaking engagements.
"Everybody who has called me has shown reluctance to do it," he said. "They say their law firms won't let them do it. Their husbands or wives won't let them do it. Their children won't let them do it. Their friends won't let them do it, even though they want to do it."
Dershowitz said that since he represented Trump, at least six lawyers had asked him about what it was like working for the former president and whether it affected his career. In one conversation, when Dershowitz told another attorney about his experience being blacklisted, he said the person responded, "I'm not going near this with a 10-foot pole."
There are other reasons big-name lawyers are reluctant to represent the former president.
Justice Department officials assume they can't rely on what former President Donald Trump's lawyers say given Trump's volatility as a client.
That's according to The New York Times, which reported that department officials had been in communication with Trump's representatives for months while trying to recover hundreds of pages of government records that were improperly moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago after Trump left office.
The report cited Justice Department officials as saying they worked under the assumption that Trump's lawyers couldn't "speak with authority" for him because he could change his mind at the drop of a hat and may withhold information from his own attorneys.
www.businessinsider.com
That's according to The New York Times, which reported that department officials had been in communication with Trump's representatives for months while trying to recover hundreds of pages of government records that were improperly moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago after Trump left office.
The report cited Justice Department officials as saying they worked under the assumption that Trump's lawyers couldn't "speak with authority" for him because he could change his mind at the drop of a hat and may withhold information from his own attorneys.
DOJ officials say they can't rely on what Trump's lawyers tell them because he often ignores advice and withholds information, report says
Trump's volatility as a client is well documented, and his legal team has been widely panned in the weeks since the FBI's Mar-a-Lago raid.