Mar-a-Lago raid

[Admin]

"One of the things that none of us has seen is the warrant, an application to the court. It's very important to remember this was not a break-in, this was not a raid, this was not the attorney general of the United States deciding willy-nilly on his own that he was going to do the search. A court had to approve the search here based on, as you point out Lawrence, evidence. The evidence had to show that there was probable cause of a crime. That is the way our judicial system works, and that is what happened here."

'I’d be advising my client to tell their family I’m looking at jail time': Mueller prosecutor on the FBI's Trump search - Alternet.org

• A point lost in the noise..
  
• But there is more:
  

Trump’s Republican allies say the search violates the tenets of American exceptionalism. We just don’t do that here, said US Senator Marco Rubio. “Using government power to persecute political opponents is something we have seen many times from 3rd world Marxist dictatorships.” That might sound like a principled warning, but it’s garbage. No one ever said that American exceptionalism was cover for criming. Don’t let your love of country get in the way of your love of equal justice. The president’s allies are also issuing threats. Without knowing anything more than that Trump’s gaudy residence was searched by lawful warrant, they are vowing to investigate US Attorney General Merrick Garland. Here’s House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. “The Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization,” he said last night. “When Republicans take back the House, we will conduct immediate oversight of this department, follow the facts and leave no stone unturned.” Again, McCarthy hopes people see this as a principled position without noticing that there’s no probable cause. There’s no concrete reason to suspect a crime – unless McCarthy means that a lawful warrant is an unlawful act deserving of a congressional investigation...

Rubio, too, issued threats. In doing so, he told us exactly who the Republicans are. If they have to break the law to hurt their enemies, that’s what they’ll do, he said in so many words. “Biden is playing with fire by using a document dispute to get the @TheJusticeDept to persecute a likely future election opponent,” Rubio said today. “Because one day what goes around is going to come around.” In other words, Rubio is telling Biden – who had nothing to do with a federal judge authorizing a search warrant – that he should not do something that Rubio says is wrong or the GOP will do the same thing. But instead of being wrong, as he says it is now, it will be right.

Merrick Garland's case against Donald Trump is probably airtight | Opinion - Alternet.org

[Admin]

Six years ago, Kevin McCarthy, then House majority leader, trashed Clinton’s judgment, and castigated her “total disregard for protecting and handling our nation’s highly classified secrets”. He also demanded an expeditious FBI investigation, together with a thorough and “transparent” briefing. Not any more. This time, McCarthy has put Merrick Garland on notice. The attorney general will be the focal point of Republican-driven congressional investigations come next year. “I’ve seen enough,” McCarthy tweeted 20 months after he had blamed Trump’s base for the invasion of the Capitol..

Trump and Republicans’ terrible, no good, very bad week is about to get worse | Lloyd Green | The Guardian

• "Lock him up!"..
  

[Admin]

Let's recapitulate

• The Trumpies blame the FBI but its director was appointed by... Trump
  
• They blame the DoJ but they can only do this convincing a judge with probable cause, this is no conspiracy
  
• They could publish the search warrant which specifies what the FBI was looking for, he didn't
  
• They could publish the inventory list of the dozen or so boxes that were taken, he didn't, instead the Trumpies argue this is a conspiracy and they planted evidence.
  
• The DoJ subpoenaed Trump months before the search
  
• Judge who approved the raid receives death threats, but keep in mind this isn't a judge selected for the job, he was the judge on duty
  
• There were counterintelligence officials present in the raid
  
• The FBI received an insider tip and knew were to look
  
• Trump himself signed a law in 2018 that elevated the unauthorized removal and retention of classified government documents to a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.
  
• Trump has nothing to complain about, the amount of deference afforded to him is highly unusual, like the time afforded and amount of communication involved to get the documents back, and the fact that a redacted indictment has been made public, highly unusual.
  

[Admin]

A day after the search, Republicans rounded on the 55-year-old former justice department official, demanding that he answer to Congress for giving the green light to search the former president’s residence. Congressman Mike Turner of Ohio, the top GOP lawmaker on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, demanded Mr Wray appear before Congress to answer questions. “Congress deserves immediate answers from you as to the actions you ordered,” Mr Turner wrote in a letter to the FBI director...Jim Jordan, the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, called for Mr Wray to “come to the House Judiciary Committee this Friday and answer our questions about this action today, which has never happened in American history.” There were even calls to “defund the FBI” from some of Mr Trump’s most fervent supporters, and allegations of a deep state conspiracy.

Who is Christopher Wray, the FBI director who (probably) authorised the search of Mar-a-Lago?

• Christopher Wray, the FBI director happens to be a Trump appointee..
  

The Justice Department subpoenaed former President Trump months before federal law enforcement executed a search warrant of his Mar-a-Lago estate this week, The New York Times reported Thursday. According to the Times, investigators had been concerned about classified national security information that might have remained at Trump’s Florida property, even in the months after the National Archives recovered 15 boxes of White House materials from there in January.

The Hill

• Trump had months to give the missing documents back
  

The Justice Department on Thursday moved to unseal a warrant authorizing a search of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate this week following escalating demands for answers about the unprecedented investigation. Pro-Trump backlash to FBI search fuels concern over political violence The Memo: Legal storms engulf Trump “The public’s clear and powerful interest in understanding what occurred under these circumstances weighs heavily in favor of unsealing,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in a court filing submitted Thursday afternoon.

DOJ asks court to unseal Trump search warrant | The Hill

[Admin]

If this was about some run-of-the-mill classified documents accidentally swept up in the president’s hasty exit from the White House, surely the FBI wouldn’t care. Likewise, if these documents weren’t really that sensitive—as it turned out with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 email scandal—it’s hard to imagine the Justice Department going to these lengths. Ironically (again), the Justice Department’s 2016 decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her sloppy handling of classified materials as secretary of state raises the bar for any prosecution stemming from Trump’s handling of classified documents. DOJ prosecutors are heavily driven by precedent and similar past cases, which means that in order to pursue this Trump investigation, there would have to be more serious (and criminal) concerns than there were in the investigation of Clinton.

Trump FBI Raid: 5 Big Takeaways From the Mar-a-Lago Search | WIRED

Notably, the team included Jay Bratt, the chief of the Justice Department’s counterintelligence and export control section, which is normally a high-level office role in Washington and hardly a standard field investigator. 

Trump FBI Raid: 5 Big Takeaways From the Mar-a-Lago Search | WIRED

• Given the expected fallout, it's likely the concerns were serious..
  

[Admin]

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) announced on Friday that she had filed articles of impeachment against Attorney General Merrick Garland as the FBI’s search of the former president’s Florida residence roils Republicans.  Greene’s resolution claims that the attorney general’s “personal approval to seek a search warrant for the raid on the home of the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, constitutes a blatant attempt to persecute a political opponent.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene files articles of impeachment against Garland | The Hill

• This is of course just performance art, but it is of course against the law for anyone to take documents, some of which can only be read within a special vault out and not give them back for over a year, despite having been subpoenaed for it months ago. People have gone to jail for that.
  

[Admin]

His followers — which means pretty much the whole of the Republican Party — took up the cry based on no more information than that. Fox News host Mark Levin called the search “the worst attack on this republic in modern history, period.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) called it “corrupt & an abuse of power.” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) compared the FBI to “the Gestapo.” Not to be outdone, former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Whackadoodle) said the FBI was the “American Stasi,” and compared its agents to wolves “who want to eat you.” “Today is war,” declared  Steven Crowder, a podcaster with a YouTube audience of 5.6 million people. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) tweeted “DEFUND THE FBI!” Former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon, among many others, suggested that the FBI and the Justice Department (“essentially lawless criminal organizations”) might have planted evidence. Only now, as Paul Harvey used to say, are we hearing the rest of the story — and what has been reported so far bears no relation to the persecution fantasies of Trump and his cult followers. 

Republicans went crazy over the Trump search. Now they look idiotic.

• Without knowing any of the facts (which long ceased to matter for these people anyway)..
  

[Admin]

Donald Trump is under fire for allegedly leaking the entire unredacted warrant and “endangering” FBI agents who searched his Mar-a-Lago home as part of an investigation into the removal of official records from the White House. A judge unsealed a redacted version of the Mar-a-Lago search warrant documents, which show the Justice Department recovered 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked with the highest levels of classification. “The disgusting, vile, deranged former POTUS just leaked the entire warrant,” a viral tweet by user ‘Spiro Agnew’s Ghost’ claimed. “The one his lawyers said he didn’t have with the FBI agents’ names unredacted, so he could purposefully endanger them.” However, the handle did not offer proof that Mr Trump was behind the leak. Meanwhile, Breitbart faced flak for publishing a leaked version of the Mar-a-Lago search warrant that included the names of an FBI special agent and supervisor agent, with users claiming Mr Trump himself leaked the document to the right-wing organisation.

Did Trump leak Mar-a-Lago warrant revealing names of FBI agents as threats against bureau rise? | The Independent

• Whether it was Trump, it was certainly Breitbart and it's fascism, with one Trumpie already trying to storm an FBI office and an explosion of online threats.
  

[Admin]

At least one member of Mr Trump’s legal team signed a written statement earlier this summer stating that all of the materials marked as classified which were stored in boxes at Mr Trump’s private Florida club and home had been handed over to the government, according to four individuals who spoke to The New York Times. The new defence coming out of Donald Trump’s office in response to the raid on his home is that the documents found at Mar-a-Lago had already been declassified. A statement defending the keeping of the documents at the former president’s private club was shared on Fox News on Friday by right-wing writer John Solomon. “As we can all relate to, everyone ends up having to bring home their work from time to time. American presidents are no different. President Trump, in order to prepare for work the next day, often took documents including classified documents from the Oval Office to the residence,” the statement said.

Trump news – latest: Lawyer told DoJ all classified material at Mar-a-Lago had been returned, report says | The Independent

"If Donald Trump gets arrested by the guy Donald Trump appointed for violating a law Donald Trump enacted, I'll start going to church," Media Matters research director Craig Harrington, evidently not a regular churchgoer, tweeted Wednesday. Harrington was referring to Monday's FBI search of the former president's Mar-a-Lago club, cleared by Trump's hand-picked FBI director Christopher Wray, and a 2018 law Trump signed that elevated the unauthorized removal and retention of classified government documents to a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.

Trump increased his current legal jeopardy by signing a 2018 law on handling classified documents | The Week

• So the member of the legal team was lying or didn't know what he was talking about.
  
• It's illegal to bring classified documents home. Trump himself increased the penalty for this.
  
• Remember "Lock her up!"..
  

[Admin]

Just ahead of Mr Garland’s statement, an individual in the former president’s inner circle contacted a DOJ official to send a message from Mr Trump to Mr Garland, The New York Times reported. The former president wanted the attorney general to be aware that people around the US were furious about the raid. “The country is on fire,” Mr Trump is quoted as saying, according to the individual with knowledge of the message, according to The Times. “What can I do to reduce the heat?”

Trump asked Merrick Garland: ‘What can I do to reduce the heat?’ before FBI warrant was unsealed, report says | The Independent

• What he can do to reduce the heat??! Stop lying, for starters:
  

A judge unsealed the search warrant the next day, including an inventory of the items collected by the FBI on Monday. Mr Trump claimed that no wrongdoing had taken place, and he also baselessly suggested that agents had planted evidence at his residence.

Trump asked Merrick Garland: ‘What can I do to reduce the heat?’ before FBI warrant was unsealed, report says | The Independent

• Trump also claimed he had declassified all documents
  
• His lawyer had claimed all documents were returned a couple of months ago when they were subpoenaed
  
• He claimed that Obama took a host of classified documents to Chicago
  
• He claims that it is a political witch hunt, while if anybody else had taken classified documents there would not have been a year-long attempt at a negotiated return, to put it mildly.
  

All lies and there are more, not to mention what his followers say.