Very roughly, our knowledge of the search warrant debacle has proceeded like this:
FBI searches Mar-a-Lago and removes about a dozen boxes of documents.
Donald Trump immediately suggests the FBI planted evidence against him.
Republicans almost unanimously back Trump and accuse the FBI of a partisan fishing expedition.
Parts of the search warrant and the FBI property receipt are leaked, showing some of the boxes contained ultra-top-secret documents, including signals intelligence related to foreign leaders.
In fact, some of the documents contained "nuclear secrets."
Trump ridiculously claims that he had declassified everything in the boxes. This sets off another round of disingenuous Republican chin stroking that's mostly designed to distract the press.
It turns out that FBI counterintelligence had visited Mar-a-Lago in June and asked for the return of any classified documents.
Against the advice of his staff, Trump refused. His lawyers then signed an affidavit saying Trump no longer had possession of anything classified. This was obviously untrue.
Republicans begin arguing that these classified documents weren't really any big deal. Probably just keepsakes or some such. Not classified classified, you understand.
Also, they say the FBI hates Republicans and is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party. They've increasingly felt this way ever since James Comey refused to indict Hillary Clinton for her handling of official emails. Rants about “defunding the FBI” finally confirm the death of irony.
Trump starts issuing a barrage of statements. Lots of other presidents took classified documents when they left the White House. He had a standing order to declassify anything he took with him to the residence. Barack Obama took millions of pages of classified documents, including nuclear secrets (a statement that prompted the National Archives to issue a statement denying this).
Aides start leaking stories about the chaotic last days of the Trump administration. Apparently everyone knew Trump was taking stuff he shouldn't, but nobody had the guts to stop him.
That's where we are now. By tomorrow, who knows? That depends on what kind of leaks our press corps is able to squeeze out of their sources.
Drew Findley should be ashamed to take trump's money - well, the RNC's money, since trump hasn't paid all of his past lawyers & hasn't officially declared that he's running again - not because of what he said about trump 24 days into 45's administration, but because he knows that this not a matter of a partisan investigation or unconstitutional overreach.
I'm waiting for the affidavit to show up. I think this will lay out in more detail the how's and why's of the Warrant.
I wouldn't expect the affidavit to be released until the full investigation is done. Even then, I'd expect it to be redacted to protect the people who helped the FBI. The Republicans will insist that any redactions means it's a conspiracy!!!!
I suppose Trump could start blaming his lawyers and aides, claiming that they are all RINOs out to get him. Or he could say that holding onto the documents protected them from the prying eyes of the communist spies at the National Archives. Or maybe he'll just say that having top secret documents he could expose to America's enemies is the only protection he has against the deep state trying to destroy him.
Is there any excuse that his base would find unacceptable?
Pete Navarro is already saying something similar to this. Claiming Trump took the documents to make them public and show the people the dangers of the deep state and its secrets in order to get the US out of all wars and create more jobs.
Okay. Then what's taking him so long? He's had nearly two years for his big democracy-restoring reveal.
Drew Findley may get paid for representing trump, since the RNC is presumably still paying his legal expenses, but the man who called for impeachment after just 24 days of that president, may regret the nature of the additional fame & realize that he had enough money before that decision, since the fame from professional success outweighs the publicity of mere notoriety.
The documents are covered by attorney/client privilege. Or executive privilege. One of those. "Sources" have assured Fox News this is the case. Why "sources" have insisted on anonymity was not explained.
Former Sir was horrified to learn the news, and demanded the documents be returned immediately. Suggestions that he was actually "sources" are contemptible cynicism.
Naturally every Trumpropaganda website (including Jonathan Turley! Who's a Democrat, you know!) is running with this latest squirrel. The FBI's malice in planting privileged documents that Former Sir had already declassified is self-evident.
Everytime Turley comments on Trump, like with Dershowitz, he should be forced to sign a legal document iner the threat of perjury answering whether he is on Trump's payroll as a lawyer and is legally required to lie on Trump's behalf.
The claim -- that Trump had a standing order to declassify everything -- is a political argument but a legal non sequitur. The reality is, raising this claim tends to implicate him in 18 USC 2071 -- he still wasn't allowed to take them with him or to hold onto them at MAL.
He was asked nicely. He was asked again via subpoena. His lawyer stated they had no documents left. Someone tattled on him, leading to the search warrant and proof that he'd lied.
There is no "accident" here. His lawyer attested a factual claim that was proven false. Someone or some people are in deep doo doo.
His lawyer only said he didn't have classified documents, not stole material in general. And if they were declassified, and not reclassified by Biden with Trump explicitly told about this, the lawyer didn't lie.
Was the search warrant a 'debacle'? Don't think so. Trump and his team's actions preceding and following the issuance the search warrant sure look like several debacles
If there were any funny business in how the jackboot thugs from Merrick Garland's Injustice Department conducted themselves at Maralago during the ransacking of the 45th president's private home, El Jefe himself would have released the CCTV footage.
As is, I am surprised a selectively edited clip hasn't been shipped to all the lamestream networks for immediate release. But then again, maybe James O'Queef's crack team at Projectile Vomitus hasn't been as capable as they usually are.
"In fact, some of the documents contained "nuclear secrets.""
Source?
Here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/11/garland-trump-mar-a-lago/
“according to people familiar with the investigation.” Not officially confirmed. But also irrelevant with respect to the statutes cited.
"... Nor did they say if such documents were recovered as part of the search. .."
Your source just says they were looking for nuclear documents (which has been widely reported). It does not say they found them (as Drum claimed).
Yes. Still doesn’t make any difference in any potential legal case.
Actually, there are probably a minimum of 50 people that could be prosecuted successfully here...I have read, but not verified, that the FBI is taking finger prints off of the boxes and documents...people should be saying Yikes...not me, not me, and the attorney that signed that affidavit is sweating bullets, as well as whoever typed the damn thing...with this and Jan 6 prosecutions, as well as the disappearing Text Messages, there SHOULD be hundreds of prosecutions...to include the IG at Homeland Security.
I don't know how to set the United States right again without coming out and saying....Sorry, there must be prosecutions for wrong doers...it is the only way to stop this proliferation of lying justifications and to protect the future of the integrity of the United States.
We need Nuremberg style trials....hundreds of people in the dock.
I know this sounds crazy, maybe full of idealism, but ...Fīat jūstitia ruat cælum, ( "Let justice be done though the heavens fall." The maxim signifies the belief that justice must be realized regardless of consequences....and this is what made hundreds of years of the Republic successful).
Best Wishes, Traveller
Thank you, Traveller.
I hope you don't end up like Nicolas Cage at the end of Leaving Las Vegas, but I know having to admit your president is a treasonous criminal -- & more to the point that Hillary was right, about everyfuckingthing -- has to be difficult for you, & could send you into a substance abusive spiral.
I don't completely agree. It's very hard in government to say, "uh, boss, you can't do that". It's especially hard with a dipshit like Trump.
It shouldn't fall on the staffers, if anything falls, but it should on Trump, Meadows, and that level of folks. Meadow's job was to not let stuff like this happen, although, probably, even he couldn't stop the dumb.....
Re [Trump] had a standing order to declassify anything he took with him to the residence
The idea of a “standing order” on declassification is essentially an attempt to issue a self-pardon through the back door.
I find it hard to believe that any Trump lawyer would have signed an affidavit saying that Trump had no classified documents (not impossible to believe, Trump seems to hire notably incompetent lawyers, but difficult).
One of the basics of being a lawyer is that you can't be a lawyer and a witness in the same case. If one of Trump's lawyers thought it worthwhile to have a sworn statement that Trump had no classified documents, the proper thing to do would have been to draft an affidavit for Trump's signature. A lawyer signing such an affidavit is not only making himself a witness in the case, he is also testifying to hearsay; the lawyer cannot have personal knowledge of every document in Trump's possession in order to be sure that none of them are classified; that is knowledge that only Trump has, or can have.
Yep, and Trump will stiff the guy for being incompetent.
After everything we know about Trump, any idiot still willing to work for him deserves to get burned when Trump's idiocy and crimes eventually snare them too.
Over in Twitterland, someone made the excellent point that if Trump declassified a document, it can then be viewed by anyone Trump chooses to share it with, andwho could subsequently transmit the contents to a foreign adversary. For example, the location of a dead drop or the identity of a covert agent.
But *the declassification remains unknown to the intelligence community*, who will continue using locations and assets, which are now vulnerable.
https://twitter.com/jolberding01/status/1558853308810510339
The identities of spies working for the United States is one of the things that cannot be declassified by the president.
He relatedly outed covert spies during his administration, often personally to Putin. He got away with this because the act of a president outing an agent does declassify it. The supreme court has ruled that statute cannot restrict the presidents ability to declassify or regulate how he declassifies information
Could Ivana's coffin be considered a "dead drop" for storing classified documents? Asking for a friend.
Today in Arizona . . .
https://www.azfamily.com/2022/08/14/armed-trump-supporters-hold-protest-outside-fbi-phoenix-offices-saturday/
Was Kari Lake or Blake Masters leading the event?
If MAGA-heads are going to get violent, I'd prefer that, instead of targeting reporters, politicians, or election officials, they start with a damn hard target, the FBI.
Who better to have in the arena when a battle commences?
I am surprised J.D. ANTIVAXXX hasn't publicly demanded a memorial to Ricky Shiffer, the latest fatality in the Radical Woke Left's war on RILMURICA.
Privately, of course, I am sure he has. But the room was checked for hidden cameras, to ensure no Rmoney & the 47% moments on local Ohio news.
I doubt very much that there is a Trump order declassifying anything. Garland would have already found it. Trump doesn't get to just wave his hand and declassify, this is .GOV, there's a process he has to go through.
The idea that it's not important is pretty dumb too, although probably true in many cases. The fact is, it is, so why does he have it?
I still think the greatest irony is all the nonsense about email and he goes right out and takes documents home.
The hard-core will stay with him, but Garlands got the goods, and it'll sway enough. Trump is toast. Let's just hope that what crawls out from under the next rock isn't worse.
Di Santis isn't hiding under a rock. He's out and proud. He's worse than Trump because he's younger and smarter.
He is a con man colored boy.
Over at Lawfare - https://www.lawfareblog.com/thoughts-mar-lago-search - conservative law professor Jack Goldsmith is laying out a strategy for Trump and his minions to avoid prosecution and conviction. IANAL, but I think I’m making a defensible inference. He wants to change the issue from the handling of the documents, to their sensitivity re national security, and to define the latter exclusively with reference to the system of classification, which was established by executive order, and to the specific contents of the documents. There’s some further argument that sounds like Unitary Executive theory, popular these days among conservatives, having to do with Trump’s claim to have declassified the documents he took. If a trial judge buys this line, s/he will have to rule that the documents be produced for examination, which the government will decline to do, because the whole point is to keep the secrets secret. So the government will be forced to abandon the prosecution.
I don’t know how successful this would be. Executive orders only bind officers and employees of the Executive branch and their contractors, and violations can only result in administrative action. Trump and his minions are private citizens; any case will be brought under the statutes cited in the warrant, which don’t reference the classification system.
I had security clearances during two periods in my career, highest was Secret.
I see Benjamin Wittes is giving conservatives the benefit of the doubt again.
Those top-secret nuclear documents cannot be declassified, certainly not by an ex-President.
One thought that occured to me is: maybe Trump wanted boxes of records in order to stymie future investigators. It's possible he's in so deep in myriad areas of criminality the easiest way to proceed was to simply hoover up "all" possibly relevant records. So he carted off boxes of the stuff.
That obviously what happened.
Lets REALLY confuse MAGA world
Start a rumor that the FBI found the missing 11K votes from the state of Georgia that would have given Trump the victory he needed
That would make a few heads explode............
Lo”!
Lol!
This link - https://www.npr.org/2022/08/15/1117457622/rand-paul-what-is-espionage-act-repeal - popped up on my Google News page with the headline “Why Rand Paul wants the Espionage Act to be repealed.”
Duh. Because it got him on NPR, Faux Nooz and other news feeds.
Rand Paul is running for re-election in November and needs Trump's imprimatur.