BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

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EnterpriseSovereign
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by EnterpriseSovereign »

Broomstick wrote: 2022-08-26 03:04pm
EnterpriseSovereign wrote: 2022-08-25 11:09am Why would Trump have ordered the arrest of his own VP though?
Trump punishes anyone who doesn't obey him and fulfill his desires. Pence defied Trump's wishes, so in Trump's mind Pence is a criminal and a traitor.

Absolutely Trump would have had Pence arrested on the spot if he had been there. And if the mob beat or hung Pence Trump would have done nothing to stop them, just stood by with a smirk on his face.

Trump is NOT a nice person. Don't ever forget that. ESPECIALLY when he is turning on the charm and charisma.
Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #48: The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife.

It's not like Trump actually gives a fuck about alienating the rest of the Republican party and has a track record of going out of his way to doing exactly that.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by Solauren »

EnterpriseSovereign wrote: 2022-08-26 10:52pm
Broomstick wrote: 2022-08-26 03:04pm
EnterpriseSovereign wrote: 2022-08-25 11:09am Why would Trump have ordered the arrest of his own VP though?
Trump punishes anyone who doesn't obey him and fulfill his desires. Pence defied Trump's wishes, so in Trump's mind Pence is a criminal and a traitor.

Absolutely Trump would have had Pence arrested on the spot if he had been there. And if the mob beat or hung Pence Trump would have done nothing to stop them, just stood by with a smirk on his face.

Trump is NOT a nice person. Don't ever forget that. ESPECIALLY when he is turning on the charm and charisma.
Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #48: The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife.

It's not like Trump actually gives a fuck about alienating the rest of the Republican party and has a track record of going out of his way to doing exactly that.
He'd rather rip them down and replace it with 'his brand' anyway
I've been asked why I still follow a few of the people I know on Facebook with 'interesting political habits and view points'.

It's so when they comment on or approve of something, I know what pages to block/what not to vote for.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by bilateralrope »

Here's an update with more information about the kinds of documents the FBI found:

Trump in increasing legal peril one month on from Mar-a-Lago search
Ed Pilkington
@edpilkington
Sat 3 Sep 2022 07.00 BST

The photo released by the justice department of materials seized at his resort sends a message: the time for frivolity is over


The photo tells it all. There is the overabundance of the carpet in Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Florida resort, with its elaborate floral design presumably intended to suggest taste and luxury but merely signaling excess.

There is the tackiness of the cheap gilded frames stuck in a box on the right of the picture, an echo of the golden skin plastered all over Trump Tower in Manhattan. In the front frame, the ego of the owner rings out – it is a Time magazine cover from 2019 showing Trump’s Democratic presidential challengers, Joe Biden among them, peering enviously at him as he sits in the Oval Office.

And then there is the stuff that truly matters: the six folders of documents strewn across the floor marked “Secret/SCI” or “Top Secret/SCI”. Immediately, the papers point the viewer in a very different direction: this image is not about excess or tackiness or ego; it is about secrecy, danger, illegality.

The photo is to be found appended to the 36-page court filing released by the Department of Justice (DoJ) on Tuesday in its battle with Trump over classified records. Attachment F displays some of the confidential documents that the FBI discovered during their hotly contested search of Mar-a-Lago earlier this month.

The picture encapsulates not only Trump’s disdain for democratic norms and laws, but also the thickening legal peril that is now closing in on him. It is carefully composed, allowing the viewer just enough legible detail to draw deductions.

Here is a document stamped 9 May 2018 – the day after Trump announced he had pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear deal, as Bloomberg noted. Here’s another White House document marked “Secret, Limited Access”, dated 26 August 2018.

Was that classified because that was the day after Trump’s nemesis, Senator John McCain, died? Or was there some other reason to explain its “NOFORN” designation – not for the eyes of any foreign national?

Trump tried to belittle the importance of the photograph. “Terrible the way the FBI threw documents haphazardly all over the floor (perhaps pretending it was me that did it!)” he fulminated on his Truth Social social media network.

But his trademark flippant-dismissive tone might not suffice on this occasion. Not when on Friday the most detailed inventory yet of the materials seized at Mar-a-Lago was unsealed, showing that it included 103 classified documents, including 13 marked “Top Secret”, as well as 90 folders that were classified or marked for return to the White House staff secretary or a military aide but which were mysteriously empty.

And not when another document in the DoJ photo contains the four devastating letters: HCS-P. That signifies that the document contains intelligence gathered from clandestine human sources – often spies or informants working undercover. Such “Humint” must be exceptionally closely guarded for the safety of America’s own people.

That was the message the DoJ wanted to transmit in releasing the photo: the time for frivolity is over.

“We now know that some of the information recovered was labeled in a way that could indicate it was derived from confidential human sources,” Andrew McCabe, the former FBI deputy director under both Barack Obama and Trump, told the Guardian.

“There’s a chance that information was collected from people who are working on behalf of the US overseas, including potentially CIA sources. You are literally talking about people’s lives.”

On 8 August, when dozens of FBI agents fanned through Mar-a-Lago bearing a search warrant issued by a federal judge, Trump lashed out. . “These are dark times for our nation,” he said, describing the legally authorised search as a “raid” and portraying it as a blatantly political attack akin to one of those “broken, Third-World Countries”.

He added: “Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before.”

Unusually for Trump, that last statement was correct. Never has a US president been subject to an involuntary search of their home by federal agents pursuing evidence in a criminal investigation.

Over the past four weeks a cascade of information has been released that tells the other side of the story. It transpires that the unprecedented nature of the FBI search was posited on the even more unprecedented behavior of the 45th president of the United States.

Trump has been archivally challenged, to coin a phrase, for many years. The roots of his refusal to abide by normal rules relating to documents stretch back at least to his refusal to disclose his own tax returns during the 2016 presidential campaign – a resistance to accepting public access to his personal papers that is the mirror image of his current claim that presidential records from his time in the White House belong to him.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University history professor who is author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present and publisher of the Lucid newsletter about threats to democracy, says this blurring of public and private is central to his autocratic style of leadership.

“For Trump, records are not just documents. They are a measure of control – leverage over enemies and over his inner circle. This kind of leader doesn’t recognize the division between public and private. They have a proprietary mode of exercising power in which everything is theirs.”

By June 2018 such proprietary behavior was expressing itself in the White House. Politico reported that Trump was routinely tearing up official records rather than filing them for safekeeping in the National Archives as he was legally obliged to do.

White House aides were left desperately attempting to tape the documents back together – a farcical vignette of government in the Trump era. After he was forced out of the White House, many presidential papers were received by the archives in similarly torn-up condition.

Documents that weren’t ripped up were often hoarded. Stephanie Grisham, a senior White House aide, described the pattern to the Washington Post.

At the end of each day boxes would be carried upstairs to the White House residence. “They would get handed off to the residence and just disappear.”

Grisham gave a memorable insight into the chaotic wiring of Trump’s mind, rendered in physical form through the contents of the boxes. “There was no rhyme or reason – it was classified documents on top of newspapers on top of papers people printed out of things they wanted him to read. That was our filing system.”

Since the Mar-a-Lago search Trump has pleaded innocence, acting like the schoolboy who mumbles denials as he sucks brazenly on a stolen lollypop. “They could have had it anytime they wanted – and that includes LONG ago. ALL THEY HAD TO DO IS ASK,” Trump spluttered.

Over the past month, however, it has become abundantly clear that the archivists did ask – over and over and over again. They began asking for boxes of documents, in fact, even before Trump quit the White House, and carried on doing so throughout 2021.

On 18 January this year, Trump finally returned 15 boxes from Mar-a-Lago. Just like the jumbled contents Grisham described, they contained a mishmash of newspaper clippings, handwritten notes, memos, dinner menus, letters, a cocktail napkin, briefing papers – the archival equivalent of a yard sale.

They also contained records that confirmed the archivists’ worst fears. Tucked among the bric-a-brac were 184 classified documents, including 25 marked “Top Secret” and several with the chilling HCS human intelligence stamp indicating that lives were potentially at risk.

It did not end there.

Federal investigators who were brought in to investigate the matter became convinced that Trump was still hiding stuff. A grand jury subpoena was issued in May demanding the return of any classified document, and on 3 June three FBI agents and a DoJ official visited Mar-a-Lago to take possession of a further 38 classified documents, including 17 marked “Top Secret”, that Trump professed to have just discovered.

During that visit a Trump lawyer signed a sworn certification that stated – on Trump’s personal authorization – that “a diligent search” had been conducted of all boxes brought from the White House. “Any and all” of the documents that were subject to the subpoena had been handed over and there were “no other records stored in any private office space or other location”.

The FBI remained suspicious. Maybe it was because, when the agents were taken to look around the storage room at Mar-a-Lago, they were pointedly forbidden from opening or looking inside any of the White House boxes.

Maybe it was the surveillance footage captured outside the storage room, which the FBI obtained under a separate subpoena, which reportedly showed employees going in and out of the space that was supposed to have been secured.

Or maybe it was because the DoJ has had a rich network of informants operating within Mar-a-Lago. Prosecutors have hinted strongly that they did, referring in the affidavit released last week to “a significant number of civilian witnesses” whose identities needed protecting.

That in turn might help explain why the justice department eventually came to the end of its tether and at the highest level – that of US attorney Merrick Garland – decided to press the button on the Mar-a-Lago search. After all, if the US government could so easily extract insider information from Trump’s sanctuary, what was preventing foreign governments doing the same?

“Mar-a-Lago is not Donald’s home, it’s a social club,” said Michael Cohen who, as Trump’s longtime lawyer until 2018 when he pleaded guilty to tax evasion and other offenses, knows what he is talking about. “There are thousands of people who are members and, along with their guests, come and go from the premises at will. The premises are unsecured and no place for top secret documents.”

McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, also knows what he is talking about. “Mar-a-Lago is a spy’s dream. It’s a public place, easy to get into. A determined trained intelligence officer could get themselves in and likely get an audience with the former president who had access to the utmost sensitive secrets that we have.”

The full horror may never publicly be known of what lies inside the more than 320 classified documents that have been recovered from Mar-a-Lago since January. Some of the items listed in the property receipt the FBI compiled after the 8 August search are intriguing: what do the “handwritten notes” contain?

Others are titillating and alarming in equal measure, such as listing 1A – “info re: President of France”. Rolling Stone reported this week that Trump has bragged to associates that he has knowledge, some of it gleaned through US intelligence, of Emmanuel Macron’s illicit love life – though it is not clear whether that has any relevance.

But above all, there were the staggering 55 top secret documents in total that were retrieved from Mar-a-Lago, some with HCS and NOFORN markings. As an unnamed source familiar with the search told the Washington Post, the stash contained “among the most sensitive secrets we hold”.

All of this leaves several burning questions. Could any of this hyper-sensitive material already have found its way into the wrong hands?

Again, we don’t know, other than that the director of national intelligence is reviewing the Mar-a-Lago documents to assess their possible impact on national security. One critically obvious but unstated issue is whether undercover agents will need to be relocated to guard their lives.

Then there is the overriding puzzle: what, if anything, was Trump intending to do with the documents and why has he gone to such tortuous lengths to hold on to them? Cohen, who watched Trump’s antics up close for many years, thinks he knows the answer.

“Donald intended to use the documents to extort the US government and prevent an indictment and conviction. In essence: a get out of jail free card.”

Which brings us to the third pressing question: will Trump be indicted? Certainly, the peril of a criminal prosecution now looms large.

The DoJ has made clear in recent filings that it feels it has evidence of obstruction of a federal investigation. He also faces possible indictment under the Espionage Act, which punishes unauthorized retention or disclosure of national security information, and a third law prohibiting mishandling of sensitive government records.

“There’s no question what he had, there’s no question where he had it,” McCabe said. “We now know there was some reason to believe the Trump team was potentially misrepresenting things and lying to the FBI, so this is very serious.”

McCabe says the investigation into such a prominent political figure who has indicated he might stand in the 2024 presidential election is fraught with peril. “You could appear as though you were conducting some sort of political retaliation, and we are absolutely not that kind of nation.”

But, then again, there are perils the other way too. McCabe looks back on his own interactions with Trump and is struck by the high price of inaction.

In March 2018 he was fired from the FBI two days before he was due to retire, having been the target of Trump’s constant attacks. McCabe had incurred the president’s wrath by approving an FBI investigation into possible obstruction of justice relating to Trump’s earlier dismissal of FBI director James Comey.

McCabe, who has since had his dismissal rescinded, told the Guardian that “it’s clear from the decisions that I made, or was part of, when I was in government, that I believe very strongly that the decision not to investigate can be as impactful and as political as the decision to investigate.”

If prosecutors are staved off because the subject is a politician who might be running for office, McCabe said, “or because they’ve said nasty things about us – then we actually have given in to politicization. And we’ve begun to create a class of citizens in this country who are above the law.”
Documents about US spies and informants sounds like something other nations would be willing to pay for.

Information about Emmanuel Macron’s love life sounds like something Trump grabbed for his own amusement.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by GrosseAdmiralFox »

bilateralrope wrote: 2022-09-05 03:19am Information about Emmanuel Macron’s love life sounds like something Trump grabbed for his own amusement.
Or to allow Macron to get Red Robbin'd...
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by Crazedwraith »

Haven't seen this mentioned but Trump will be allowed a special master to look through the documents
The BBC wrote: A judge has granted Donald Trump's demand for a "special master" to oversee the case into his handling of classified materials.

Mr Trump is being investigated for allegedly taking documents with him when he left the White House.

But the "special master" is an independent lawyer who decides if any of the records are covered by attorney-client or executive privilege.

The move is seen as a blow to prosecutors and a win for Mr Trump.

The former president had asked for the special master to be appointed, while prosecutors had strongly opposed it - and the appointment is likely to slow down the justice department's ongoing criminal investigation.

That is because the judge has banned the government from reviewing or using the seized materials for its investigation until the special master's independent review has been completed.

Department of Justice officials previously said that documents stored at former President Donald Trump's Florida home were likely to have been concealed as part of an effort to obstruct an FBI investigation.

The authorities say these documents should have been handed over to the National Archives - which US presidents are legally obliged to do upon leaving office.

Mr Trump, meanwhile, denies any kind of wrongdoing, arguing that as president he had declassified all the documents, and that they were kept securely at his Mar-a-Lago home.

The Department of Justice resisted Mr Trump's request saying that any presidential records seized in the FBI's 8 August search of Mar-A-Lago "belong to the United States, not to the former president".

It is not clear how long the special master's review will take.

Mr Trump's lawyers have argued some of the documents are covered by attorney-client privilege - a part of US law that allows people to keep conversations with their lawyers private.

His legal team have also claimed "executive privilege" over the documents, which allows presidents to keep certain communications under wraps.

However, some legal experts argue that these moves are merely a tactic to delay proceedings - since the documents have already been looked at.

Before the decision was handed down, law professor and US constitutional law expert Aziz Huq told the BBC the demand for a special master was simply "throwing sand in the gears".

"It's unclear why a special master is required. A special master is usually used before the government sees the underlying material, and here the government has seen them," the former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said.

Former federal prosecutor and former deputy attorney general for New York, E Danya Perry, said: "What really strikes me here is it's too late... you can't unscramble the egg or put the genie back in the bottle. These documents have been reviewed."

----------

Trump records probe timeline
January 2022 - The National Archives retrieves 15 boxes of White House records from Mar-a-Lago, and says some of the documents it received at the end of Trump administration had been torn up
February - Reports emerge that classified files were found in the Mar-a-Lago cache and National Archives has asked DoJ to investigate
April - US media report the FBI has begun a preliminary investigation
3 June - A senior DoJ official and three FBI agents travel to Mar-a-Lago to review items in a basement. According to Mr Trump, he told them: "Whatever you need, just let us know"
8 June - Federal investigators write to a Trump aide to ask that a stronger lock be used to secure the room storing the items. Trump says that request was quickly fulfilled
22 June - The Trump Organization receives a DoJ summons for CCTV footage from Mar-a-Lago
8 August - Dozens of agents search Mar-a-Lago, seizing more than 33 boxes, some containing top secret files, according to the warrant
12 August - Warrant released, showing that 11 sets of classified documents were taken
25 August - Judge orders justice department to release a redacted version of court papers that convinced him to authorise a search of the Trump estate
This definitely helps Trump at the very least delay the investigations into him.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by bilateralrope »

It might not significantly delay the indictments for two reasons:
- This only covers what the FBI took during the search. They can still use the classified documents Trump handed over beforehand.
- The DOJ has a policy that's going to make them delay any indictment until after the midterm elections. At which point, a delay of a few more months doesn't mean much.




Opinion | Trump’s Lawyers Might Think They Just Won. They Still Botched the Case.
Trump’s incompetent attorneys turned an administrative matter into a possible criminal indictment. The appointment of a special master doesn’t change that.

Opinion by RENATO MARIOTTI

09/06/2022 11:39 AM EDT
Renato Mariotti is the Legal Affairs Columnist for POLITICO Magazine. He is a former federal prosecutor and host of the “On Topic” podcast.


Donald Trump has a history of using questionable lawyers to his advantage. From the disbarred Roy Cohn to fixer (and felon) Michael Cohen, Trump used lawyers as a tool to expand his empire. As president, he used unethical lawyers like Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman to carry forward schemes to hold onto power. Even when those lawyers got into trouble, Trump has managed to avoid serious consequences.

But now Trump’s attorneys have managed to help him get into a legal jam the likes of which he has never faced. Whether out of incompetence or a desire to please their notoriously rules-averse client, they have committed a series of unconscionable errors that turned the government’s document recovery effort into an ongoing criminal investigation of the former president that could result in an unprecedented criminal indictment. Monday’s ruling by a judge agreeing with Trump’s request to appoint a third party to review the documents might look like a win, but it is a limited response to a catastrophe that they could have avoided.

What is almost as shocking as the jeopardy Trump now faces is how easily it could have been avoided with even a modest amount of competent legal advice. Obviously, a lot of this is Trump’s own doing. He is ultimately responsible for the decision to bring tens of thousands of government documents — many of them highly classified — to his country club home in Palm Beach. But one reason lawyers have jobs is because their clients have already made poor decisions. A good attorney quarterbacking this situation for Trump would have prevented those bad decisions from compounding by ensuring his residence wasn’t searched and negotiating a deal to avoid any risk of criminal charges.

Trump’s lawyers’ performance here is a case study in poor defense. Instead of cooperating with the government to negotiate the return of its records when this was a civil matter, Trump’s team produced boxes of haphazard records that contained classified documents that were not organized and appear not to have been reviewed or catalogued prior to production. Once a criminal investigation was open, instead of negotiating a deal with DOJ, Trump’s lawyers lied to the Feds and made themselves witnesses (and potentially subjects) in the criminal investigation, making criminal charges against Trump more likely.

The negotiations between the National Archives and Records Administration and Trump’s representatives throughout 2021 should have prompted lawyers to step in and manage the situation. Unlike the Justice Department, NARA doesn’t have criminal enforcement powers and was trying to work with Trump’s team to facilitate the return of what turned out to be thousands of pages of government records. The time to seek accommodations from the government was when NARA was the counterparty, not the DOJ.

Before Trump, presidents worked cooperatively with NARA with respect to their presidential records, which are owned by the federal government. But even if Trump wanted to take a more aggressive approach, or even wanted to keep some of the records, it would have been important for his lawyers to figure out up front what exactly he wanted and then to negotiate with NARA. We know the negotiations with NARA weren’t managed properly because of how and what was ultimately produced to NARA. According to NARA’s referral to the Justice Department on Feb. 9, the 15 boxes of documents received from Trump’s team included “newspapers, magazines, printed news articles, photos” and other documents mixed in with “a lot of classified records.” NARA told DOJ that a “significant concern” was that “highly classified records” were mixed in with other records and were unidentified and unfoldered.

No competent attorney would have approved the production of documents to the government without reviewing and cataloguing the documents provided. You have to know what it is that you’re producing and what, if anything, is still being held back. While attorneys may not have been able to review certain classified documents, the existence of those documents should not have been a surprise to Trump’s team. They should have been aware that they were producing classified materials, raised that issue to NARA before producing, and produced them in a secure manner.

Because willfully possessing classified material without authorization is a crime, a prudent lawyer — even at that initial stage — would have spoken with Trump to determine whether he had any other classified documents and would have considered initiating a conversation with DOJ at that point. I would have considered seeking “act of production” immunity for handing over the documents. Such immunity would ensure the government can’t use the very act of producing classified documents to prove my client broke the law by possessing them. I suspect DOJ wouldn’t have pursued the matter further if all of the classified material had been returned, but obtaining immunity when there is potential criminal liability is usually a prudent step.

What was important, at that point, was to be honest with the federal government and to return all the classified material that was in Trump’s possession. Unlike a typical government employee, Trump had some excuses he could have offered for keeping classified material, and DOJ likely wouldn’t have done anything more if Trump’s team had been honest, forthright and went out of its way to ensure the government that its property was safely back in its possession.

------

Of course, that didn’t happen, and according to DOJ, the “FBI developed evidence indicating that even after the 15 boxes were provided to NARA, dozens of additional boxes remained at the premises that were also likely to contain classified information.” As a result, the DOJ issued a subpoena to Trump’s attorneys on May 11.

It’s hard to overstate how significant the issuance of a grand jury subpoena is in this circumstance. If I were Trump’s lawyer on May 11, I would have told him this means that he is now dealing with DOJ — not NARA — and that DOJ is indicating that it would use its much more substantial powers — a court-approved search warrant, for example — to get classified material back.

When I receive a call from an alarmed potential client who has just received a grand jury subpoena, I advise them to follow my advice to the letter and they usually do. Trump is not the typical client. He has a history of opposing the DOJ, dating back to the 1970s when the department charged his family’s real estate company with racial discrimination. As president, he bridled against the department’s independence, especially when then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions appointed a special counsel to investigate whether Trump had colluded with the Russians in the 2016 election. But a good attorney would have tried hard to manage him, aggressively telling him that if he did not follow legal advice, he could face criminal charges. It might be unprecedented to charge a former president, but as I have explained, concealing government documents is a very simple case to prosecute and Trump’s attorneys should have appreciated that risk.

Even after the subpoena in May, a good attorney who took charge of the situation could have avoided the execution of a search warrant. DOJ indicated to Trump’s attorneys that they could comply by “providing any responsive documents to the FBI at the place of their location” and providing a “sworn certification that the documents represent all responsive records.”

Essentially, the Justice Department was trying to help Trump’s attorneys do what they should have been doing in the first place. But they managed to completely screw that up. One of Trump’s attorneys, reportedly Christina Bobb, signed a certification that a “diligent search” was conducted and that “any and all” documents were produced to the government. Unfortunately for her, that turned out to be false.

One of Trump’s attorneys also made some false verbal statements to the DOJ and FBI agents who came to retrieve the documents, stating that all the records from the White House were stored in a single storage room, that the “remaining repository” of records was that storage room, that there were “no other records” stored anywhere else at Trump’s residence, and that all available boxes were searched. All of those statements appear to be lies. The attorney also prevented the government from looking at the storage room where the attorney said the documents came from, which suggested to the government the attorney knew it wasn’t true.

Trump’s attorney managed to create criminal liability for herself by making false statements to the DOJ and FBI, because knowingly and willfully lying to the DOJ or FBI in the course of a federal investigation is a felony. She also made herself a witness in this case, particularly given her subsequent statements — and the statements of other Trump lawyers — regarding her first-hand observations of Trump’s office, where documents were found. If one of Trump’s lawyers is a witness against him, she can’t act as a lawyer on his behalf in that case and she puts herself in the difficult position of potentially testifying against her own client. A smart attorney would never have signed that document. I would have hired someone — ideally someone with clearance to review top secret documents — to conduct a thorough search. Then, I would have had that person sign the certification or I would have had a lawyer who wasn’t representing Trump in this matter sign the certification based upon the third party’s search.

The certification would have only been part of our communication with DOJ. Once a grand jury subpoena was issued, it would have been prudent for Trump’s counsel to talk directly with DOJ attorneys about exactly what they wanted, whether they intended to investigate further once they had the material, and about “act of production” immunity. The goal of those discussions and negotiations would have been to obtain an agreement with the government not to pursue a criminal investigation in exchange for voluntary access to the Mar-a-Lago estate and production of all relevant documents.

If a deal along those lines had been struck, there would have been no search warrant or certification at all. The FBI could have come in quietly, with Trump’s permission, and conducted their own search and taken all classified material. If there were legitimate disputes over records, it would have been better to do so after the documents were already in the government’s hands and there was a deal in place to keep this as a civil dispute rather than a criminal investigation.

Obviously, that’s not how this turned out.

For some reason, even though Trump had agreed to turn over 15 boxes of material initially, he and his team balked at complying with requests for the remainder of the records. The defenses for this inexplicable behavior have been as numerous as they are flimsy. The FBI’s search was unnecessary — all they had to do was ask, they claim. Then the evidence was planted by the FBI. Then it was improper because the documents had been declassified by Trump. Then they were covered by executive privilege. Last week, his attorneys claimed they amounted to nothing more than “an overdue library book.” That was before the DOJ released an inventory of everything seized during the Aug. 8 search. That was a lot of “library books.”

Trump might not care that he contradicts himself in his efforts to swing public opinion. But no competent attorney would conduct themselves this way. The consequences might be severe. The DOJ is weighing potential criminal charges against Trump, and it is apparent that a key “plus factor” considered by DOJ is the obstruction of its investigation by Trump and his team. Until now, Trump has found his way out of or around legal problems by relying on questionable attorneys and their aggressive tactics. But that was completely counterproductive here and Trump may pay a very significant price for not seeking the advice of competent lawyers who understood how to manage a complex federal criminal defense case like this one.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by Zwinmar »

Pessimistically I think Teflon Don is going to get away with it. He has never had to face responsibility for his bad actions and I don't think that's going to start now as he has too many receiving bribes from his espionage.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by bilateralrope »

DOJ appeals decision to order special master to review evidence seized in Mar-a-Lago search and says it's halted intelligence review
By Tierney Sneed, CNN

Updated 0418 GMT (1218 HKT) September 9, 2022


(CNN)The Justice Department on Thursday appealed a court-ordered special master review of the materials seized by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago -- including more than 100 classified documents -- as it argued the order was putting US national security at risk.

The government has halted the intelligence community's risk assessment of classified documents it obtained during last month's search of former President Donald Trump's home and resort.
In addition to its appeal, the Justice Department asked US District Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee who ordered the special master, to let it continue the review of documents being done for the FBI's criminal probe -- a review the judge put on hold. The prosecutors argued that the criminal probe could not be decoupled from the intelligence community's review.
"The application of the injunction to classified records would thus frustrate the government's ability to conduct an effective national security risk assessment and classification review and could preclude the government from taking necessary remedial steps in light of that review -- risking irreparable harm to our national security and intelligence interests," the DOJ wrote in it's request for a stay.
The Justice Department had vigorously opposed the appointment of a special master, which is a third-party attorney tasked with reviewing evidence and filtering out privileged documents. The department argued to Cannon the independent review wasn't necessary, given the internal DOJ filter practices that had been used in the search.
In her Monday order granting Trump's request for the special master, Cannon halted any use of the seized materials for the DOJ's criminal investigation. She said, however, that the intelligence community's assessment could continue. The Justice Department's Thursday filing shed light on how the two endeavors are intertwined.
"The injunction against using classified records in the criminal investigation could impede efforts to identify the existence of any additional classified records that are not being properly stored -- which itself presents the potential for ongoing risk to national security," the DOJ said Thursday.
The prosecutors pointed to the empty folders marked with "classified banners" that had been found at Mar-a-Lago in the search.
"The FBI would be chiefly responsible for investigating what materials may have once been stored in these folders and whether they may have been lost or compromised -- steps that, again, may require the use of grand jury subpoenas, search warrants, and other criminal investigative tools and could lead to evidence that would also be highly relevant to advancing the criminal investigation," the DOJ said.
The prosecutor described the intelligence community review that Cannon was allowing to proceed as just "one facet of the overall effort by the government to respond to and mitigate any risks to national security." For instance, determining the "likelihood that improperly stored classified information may have been accessed by others and compromised" is a "core aspect of the FBI's criminal investigation," the prosecutors added.
"Departments and agencies in the IC would then consider this information to determine whether they need to treat certain sources and methods as compromised," the prosecutors said.

Pushback to executive privilege playing a role with classified documents

Cannon had also ordered that the independent review look for documents potentially covered by executive privilege -- in addition to the attorney-client privilege concerns that are usually a special master's focus.
The move, described as novel by both the Justice Department and outside legal experts, stands to protract the review as the criminal investigation remains hindered by Cannon's injunction.
In requesting that the criminal investigators be allowed to access to the classified documents, the Justice Department on Thursday rejected the idea that the privilege could ever apply to classified materials.
"Supreme Court precedent makes clear that any possible assertion of privilege that Plaintiff might attempt to make over the classified records would be overcome by the government's "demonstrated, specific need" for that evidence," the department said, while quoting the 1974 case United States v. Nixon. "Among other things, the classified records are the very subject of the government's ongoing investigation."
The department also took swipes at how Cannon's order cited a recent Supreme Court order, along with a concurring statement from Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in justify her move to have the review cover executive privilege. The case in question involved Trump White House records sought by a congressional committee, the department noted Thursday.
"Neither the Supreme Court's opinion denying Plaintiff's request for a stay in Thompson nor Justice Kavanaugh's concurring statement suggested that a former President can successfully assert executive privilege to prevent the Executive Branch itself from reviewing and using its own records," the filing said.
Trump filed the lawsuit seeking the special master two weeks after the search warrant was executed on his Mar-a-Lago residence and resort. According to submissions the Justice Department made to the magistrate judge who approved the warrant, the FBI is investigating potential violations of the Espionage Act, criminal mishandling of government documents and obstruction of justice.
Cannon has ordered the Justice Department and Trump's lawyers to file legal briefs laying out their proposed candidates to serve as special master, along with recommendations for how the review should proceed. The judge on Thursday instructed that the parties, in the joint submission due Friday, "consider Defendant's position as to the approximately 100 documents" referred to in the request filed by the DOJ.
Additionally, the judge has ordered Trump to file a formal response by 10 a.m. Monday to the Justice Department's request that the judge suspend parts of her special master order while the appeal proceeds.
The prosecutors told Cannon that if she did not grant their request to suspend parts of her ruling by September 15, they'd seek the intervention of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals.
The fight over the special master isn't over yet. But it's about to move to other judges.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by Solauren »

Delaying the intelligence review could be dangerous. It gives people that the information in those documents might have been leaked to, time to act on it. That could cost lives.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by Khaat »

As I understand it, the FBI has been issued a stay delaying their case, but intelligence agencies are deep into what he stole and listening for the echoes of it on the winds. There's a definitive list of what was "checked out" and never returned by his administration; the DOD and CIA bureaucrats didn't all get replaced with sycophants.

But he has to go down. If he dies first, they need to carry out the show-trial to burn his legacy to the ground. No one is above the law.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by bilateralrope »

Even if Trump dies (or flees the country), there is still the matter of his lawyers. Like the one who signed off that they had done a thorough search and returned everything, while refusing to let the FBI look inside the boxes in the storage room.

Those lawyers could easily find themselves being called as witnesses or charged for their activities before the raid. So if Trump is outside of the FBI's reach, those lawyers can still be used to make an example.

Or as I've seen others put it: MAGA: Making attorneys get attorneys.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by Lord Revan »

It's pretty obvious that Trump seems convinced that he'll just be let go and those who asked for this search punished.

Honestly, I can't Trump fleeing he's in the end an egotistical hedonist, who thinks he's much smarter than he actually is, also I can't see him committing suicide either now die of stress and poor health sure, he's an old man with not so good living habits so dying of natural causes isn't out of the question.

Also, if he flees there's the matter that he can still be convicted, meaning as long there's no President willing to pardon him, he'd have to live in exile for the rest of his life, as you can bet fleeing would be considered an admission of guilt and should Trump ever return to US soil after fleeing, he'd be arrested on the spot and since fleeing from a legal conviction is a crime in and of itself.

That said I can't see Trump fleeing trying to turn this into theater that ultimately gives him a blank check to do whatever he pleases sure but not fleeing.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by bilateralrope »

I bring up fleeing because, as unlikely as it is, running seems like the smartest move he has left. But there are big doubts about him running, both due to his ego and the difficulty in finding somewhere he can run to.

If he's going to flee, it will probably be shortly after any indictments come down.

Oh and I'm hoping that everyone who shows up to arrest him has a fully functional body camera.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by LadyTevar »

Lord Revan wrote: 2022-09-10 07:38am It's pretty obvious that Trump seems convinced that he'll just be let go and those who asked for this search punished.

Honestly, I can't Trump fleeing he's in the end an egotistical hedonist, who thinks he's much smarter than he actually is, also I can't see him committing suicide either now die of stress and poor health sure, he's an old man with not so good living habits so dying of natural causes isn't out of the question.

Also, if he flees there's the matter that he can still be convicted, meaning as long there's no President willing to pardon him, he'd have to live in exile for the rest of his life, as you can bet fleeing would be considered an admission of guilt and should Trump ever return to US soil after fleeing, he'd be arrested on the spot and since fleeing from a legal conviction is a crime in and of itself.

That said I can't see Trump fleeing trying to turn this into theater that ultimately gives him a blank check to do whatever he pleases sure but not fleeing.
I don't see him running either, especially since they grabbed several passports, including "suspicious" ones.
No, Trump's going to stay right there in his 'throne room' at Mar-a-lago, preaching that it's all fake, he's really in charge, etc etc until they drag him out in handcuffs.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by bilateralrope »

LadyTevar wrote: 2022-09-10 11:23am I don't see him running either, especially since they grabbed several passports, including "suspicious" ones.
Those passports were returned to Trump. Two expired passports, one active. The only thing I've heard about them being suspicious is people wondering why he had three, but two being expired seems a good explanation.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by Lord Revan »

bilateralrope wrote: 2022-09-10 11:55am
LadyTevar wrote: 2022-09-10 11:23am I don't see him running either, especially since they grabbed several passports, including "suspicious" ones.
Those passports were returned to Trump. Two expired passports, one active. The only thing I've heard about them being suspicious is people wondering why he had three, but two being expired seems a good explanation.
Yeah expired Passports makes sense, I mean I got at least 2 passports in my house and I'm not multi-millionaire which plans to become a dictator, only one of those passports is active and I need to replace that soon anyway.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by Lost Soal »

Apparently having multiple active passports is a thing and is usually because some countries are likely to block entry if your passport has stamps from certain other countries.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by Gandalf »

Also, one of the expired ones was his old diplomatic passport from when he was POTUS. So it's a nice souvenir as I understand it.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by Khaat »

Then there is the matter of the boxes moved to his NY(NJ?) estate right after the cooperative hand-over in June. Please tell me someone at the FBI/DOJ/DOD/DHS is working that angle.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by GrosseAdmiralFox »

Khaat wrote: 2022-09-10 10:11pm Then there is the matter of the boxes moved to his NY(NJ?) estate right after the cooperative hand-over in June. Please tell me someone at the FBI/DOJ/DOD/DHS is working that angle.
Probably a team is working on it... though every I needs to be dotted and every T must be crossed to regulation for it to be effective.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by GrosseAdmiralFox »


So, after some shenanigans, a higher court has stated that the DoJ can continue reviewing the documents at Mar-A-Lago.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by Crazedwraith »

And in adjacent news Trump and his kids are being sued for fraud.
The BBC wrote: Donald Trump and three of his children have been hit with a fraud lawsuit after a New York investigation into their family company - the Trump Organization.

It alleges that they lied "by billions" about the value of real estate in order to get loans and pay less tax.

Prosecutors say the Trump Organization committed numerous acts of fraud between 2011-21.

Mr Trump has dismissed the lawsuit as "another witch hunt".

The former president's eldest children, Donald Jr, Ivanka and Eric Trump, were also named as defendants alongside two executives at the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney.

The lawsuit has been brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is the state's most senior lawyer, after a three-year civil investigation.

Her office does not have the power to file criminal charges, but is referring allegations of criminal wrongdoing to federal prosecutors and to the Internal Revenue Service.

"With the help of his children and senior executives at the Trump Organization, Donald Trump falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself and cheat the system," Ms James said in a statement.

She said Mr Trump's own apartment in Trump Tower, which was valued at $327m (£288m), was among the properties whose values were allegedly misrepresented.

"No apartment in New York City has ever sold for close to that amount," Ms James added.

"White collar financial crime is not a victimless crime," the attorney general said.

"When the well-connected break the law to take in more money than they are entitled to, it reduces resources available to working people, to regular people, to small businesses and to all tax payers."

Ms James is asking a court to bar the former president and his children from serving as officers or directors in any New York business.

She also wants the Trump Organization banned from engaging in real estate transactions there for five years.

The announcement comes after Ms James - a Democrat who is running for re-election in November - rejected at least one offer to settle the long-running civil investigation into the company's business practices.

Blasting the lawsuit on his Truth Social site, Mr Trump branded Ms James, who is black, a racist.

"Another Witch Hunt by a racist Attorney General, Letitia James, who failed in her run for Governor, getting almost zero support from the public," he wrote.

The Trumps have previously accused Ms James of pursuing a political vendetta, citing remarks she made before being elected as attorney general in 2018 in which she vowed to sue Mr Trump and branded him an "illegitimate president".

On Twitter, Donald Trump Jr accused Ms James of "weaponising her office to go after her political opponents".

While Mr Trump is not on the ballot in November's midterm elections, he remains the dominant force in the Republican Party - and is stoking speculation about another run for the White House in 2024.

In August Mr Trump declined to answer questions during an interview at the attorney general's office connected to this civil investigation. Ms James said he repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right to not self-incriminate, confirming only his name.

Ms James said that Eric Trump did the same more than 500 times in a 2020 deposition.

Tristan Snell, a lawyer and former prosecutor who worked on a separate case against Trump University, told the BBC that the lawsuit could take a year to go to trial.

But the potential of such a trial could severely restrict Mr Trump's ability to do business in New York and profit from his marquee real estate holdings in New York City. It could trigger a series of financial consequences that would make it harder for him to raise capital and maintain credit, Snell said.

"It definitely could be ruinous for him," Snell said.
Ms James's announcement that she would pass the findings of her investigation to other law enforcement agencies was "an ominous signal" for Mr Trump, according to Miriam Baer, vice-dean at Brooklyn Law School.

"The New York attorney general went one step further today," she told the BBC. "It announced that in addition to filing this civil complaint, it was also making a referral to federal law enforcement authorities for a criminal investigation."

The lawsuit is one of a number of legal issues the former president is facing.

On 8 August, the FBI conducted a search warrant at his home in Mar-a-Lago as part of an investigation into his handling of classified records.

Federal investigators were then ordered by another judge to freeze their probe while a court-appointed official decides if any of the records should be private.

But on Wednesday a federal appeals court ruled that the justice department can resume reviewing the classified documents.

The decision reactivates the inquiry into whether Mr Trump withheld US national secrets after leaving office.

He is also being investigated in Georgia in relation to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

He has denied any wrongdoing in both those investigations.
Some additional emails I skipped over while copying the main article at the link. Not strictly related but I thought it fit better here than a new thread.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by bilateralrope »

GrosseAdmiralFox wrote: 2022-09-21 09:20pm
So, after some shenanigans, a higher court has stated that the DoJ can continue reviewing the documents at Mar-A-Lago.
One fun detail about this is that the special master asked the Trump team for details about if any of these documents had been declassified. Trump's lawyers refused to answer the question, something about not wanting to preview their defence before charged had been filed. Which means they are refusing to put anything about those declassification claims on the record with the court.


So the special master, and now the appeals court, has no choice to treat these documents according to their classification markings. So the DOJ got their appeal
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by Lord Revan »

I suspect it might have been that the Trump camp knew none of the documents were properly declassified and didn't want anything on record that could be used against them.

All this seems like Trump or his lawyers are trying to bluff the Government into backing down and simply giving Trump all the documents back, here's the thing though the Federal government is most likely not gonna back down because they simply cannot the information on those documents is simply too valuable for them to allow them to be accessed by outsiders.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS: FBI RAIDS TRUMP RESIDENCE IN MAR-A-LAGO FOR CLASSIFIED NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS, AMONG OTHERS

Post by bilateralrope »

I think it's more that Trump is saying whatever makes his supporters happy, maybe focusing on a 2024 run, maybe aiming for a riot when he gets arrested. With no thought given to the truth or the legal action(s) he's facing, because he thinks he's can ignore them. Maybe he thinks he can pardon himself out of trouble, if he can delay this for long enough to get back into the White House.

Meanwhile the lawyers are trying to keep him happy without doing anything that will get them in trouble.

Hopefully the DOJ finds enough about what he was doing with these classified documents to trigger the 14th amendment and bar him from holding office. I doubt that merely holding them is enough for that.
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