They say they found some classified information in the papers they took from Mar-A-Lago…
Something like this raid would have to have been done with the utmost transparency and documentation, as well as objective observers, if it’s done at all. But none of that was present.
FBI agents who searched former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home Monday removed 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked as top secret and meant to be only available in special government facilities, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal,” the outlet reported. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation agents took around 20 boxes of items, binders of photos, a handwritten note and the executive grant of clemency for Mr. Trump’s ally Roger Stone, a list of items removed from the property shows. Also included in the list was information about the ‘President of France,’ according to the three-page list. The list is contained in a seven-page document that also includes the warrant to search the premises which was granted by a federal magistrate judge in Florida.”
Plus, think about it: Trump was president for four years with access to all the classified information – about nuclear weapons and everything else – and nothing bad had ever happened as a result. Also, if he indeed had taken some papers of this type, and they were in his possession for the last one and a half years, what’s the big urgency right now? And why not just ask for them? Had they specifically asked and he refused? Is that documented? Were they not allowed to search last time they were there? Are they alleging the papers were hidden somewhere at the time – for example, in Melania’s clothing or a safe?
Are they going to allege he was going to give them to Russia, Russia, Russia, since we know he’s a Russian puppet?
This is reminding me, not for the first time, of the Dreyfus affair. No, Trump is not a Jewish army officer, and this is not France, and they didn’t publicly rip his epaulettes off – not yet, anyway. But Dreyfus was falsely accused and falsely convicted of selling military secrets to the Germans, and when it was becoming more clear that the accusations were false, the army forged evidence to implicate Dreyfus and protect its own reputation. The entire thing took twelve years to play out and intensely polarized France into pro and con sides, and made a lot of people in that country lose trust in previously-respected institutions.
Or perhaps they’re casting Trump as Julius Rosenberg, and they want to execute him? A few twitterati are hoping, anyway. After all, if you attack the king, you must kill him, right? Speaking of death penalties, New York’s Letitia James – who was elected on a platform to get Trump, among other things – may be looking for the “death penalty” for Trump’s New York business:
Former President Donald Trump may lose the “crown jewels” of the heir’s corporate empire if New York Attorney General Letitia James moves to invoke New York’s “corporate death penalty” against the Trump Organization, according to a new report.
On Wednesday, Trump announced he would refuse to answer questions in James’ civil investigation into the company during a deposition that lasted more than five hours.
The investigation focuses on whether the Trump Organization essentially kept two sets of books. He allegedly would low-ball values to avoid taxes, while high-balling values to secure loans.
“In the coming weeks or even days, the AG is expected to file a massive, long-threatened ‘enforcement action’ — essentially a multi-hundred-page lawsuit against the Trumps and his Manhattan-based business,” Business Insider reported Wednesday. “Fines and back taxes, however, may be the least of what Trump’s facing. James has signaled she will also seek the dissolution of the business itself under New York’s so-called corporate death penalty — a law that allows the AG to seek to dissolve businesses that operate ‘in a persistently fraudulent or illegal manner.’”
That article goes on to say that pleading the fifth in a civil case is considered evidence of guilt – as opposed to in a criminal case. Is that true? Not really; it’s complicated.
The only good thing about any of this is that the utter moral bankruptcy of Trump’s opponents has become clear, as well as the Orwellian hypocrisy of their rhetoric about defending democracy. It is democracy of which they are terrified, if it were to bring Trump to the presidency again and threaten their own power.
Also, the FBI or DOJ has has apparently leaked the information in the seized documents to the press. I guess the press now has a high-level security clearance. Or maybe the papers don’t mean a thing after all.
It also occurs to me that if the feds were left alone when they searched the premises last time, they could have planted documents then. Or of course, they could have planted them now. Is this a far-fetched thought? Not at all. They have already proven they will lie and deceive in order to implicate Trump. And naturally they also would ignore all of this if it weren’t Trump. If it involved a Democrat – say, Hillary Clinton – it would be just fine.
Are they…are they REALLY dumb enough to think prosecuting Trump over DOCUMENTS is going to work? My opinion of the general level of intellect at work in Washington, DC, is pretty low, but…do they REALLY think this will work?
Mike
The warrant was specifically for every document he saw in his four year presidency.
Fishing expedition.
https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/1558186177840222208
Amongst all the rumors swirling around the raid (not at all a “raid”, according to the leftist abusers of language), it is still difficult to separate speculation from fact, although no intelligent person should trust anything leaked to WaPo. The idea of a mole inside Trump’s circle is certainly interesting (many pointing to his son-in-law), as is the far-fetched notion that Trump somehow orchestrated the fiasco in order to demonstrate the utterly partisan and completely rotten nature of the “Deep State”, but most fascinating of all is that, in what appears to have been a “fishing expedition”, the agents were looking for any documents which might prove, beyond all doubt, the corruption lying at the heart of the irredeemable Stasi-like FBI/DOJ.
The investigation focuses on whether the Trump Organization essentially kept two sets of books. He allegedly would low-ball values to avoid taxes, while high-balling values to secure loans.
1. The tax assessors work for the New York City government and other local authorities, not for the Trump Organization.
2. I’m sure it never occurred to the banks accepting real estate as collateral to seek out an independent appraiser.
The Dreyfus case analogy is interesting. That case had a very toxic effect of France which persisted for a long time.
A note about James: between the time she finished law school and the time she passed the bar exam, the exam was administered on at least three occasions. Not sure what the proportion is for New York, but I’m familiar with bar passage data in Maryland. Of lawyers who pass the bar exam, 93% of those do so on their second try. She may have had to make as many as four attempts. She scraped by as a public defender and legal aid lawyer for ten years, then quit practicing. She’d not practiced for 19 years at the time she was elected attorney-general. It’s doubtful she could make sense of the legal briefs prepared in this case. Or any other case in which her office is involved.
Her opponent in the Attorney-General’s race in 2018 was a BigLaw partner with other things to do with his life but fart around in public office. He is black, by the way. New York voters still selected her, which tells you something about the state’s slide into vicious stupidity.
For some reason, there is a decent sized movement to accuse his son in law for everything and, in my opinion, draw a rift in the family. Been happening pretty much since day 1z
“That article goes on to say that pleading the fifth in a civil case is considered evidence of guilt – as opposed to in a criminal case. Is that true? Not really; it’s complicated.”
In general, I support law enforcement in all its forms ( e.g., police, detectives, prosecutors).
However, I also know that innocent people find themselves convicted of crimes they did not commit; because they could not foresee how what they said could be used against them.
That does not mean law enforcement is made up of bad people. That simply means they are taking what they now know – provided by you – and seeing if it supports an explanation that helps solve the crime.
Never talk to law enforcement without a lawyer. Also, it is not your responsibility to help the government make their case.
The 5th Amendment clause is just one more example of the wisdom of our founders.
Are we supposed to pretend Trump kept the top secret stuff in his top desk drawer and perused them leisurely on a daily basis?
Or, would normal person assume, if the documents exist, that they were packed away in boxes of stuff never examined, like the collection of stuff inherited from grandma.
In a world of high-resolution and high-speed optical scanners at low cost, every document not already digital can be digitized. Once digitized, every file can be stored anywhere: in the cloud, in a thumb drive. If Trump took away 30-odd boxes of documents on January 20, 2021, by breakfast on January 21, 2021 they could be anywhere. Since Trump controlled the documents’ classification, he could have put them all online at any time without breaking the law. Or so it seems to me.
So this raid was an exercise in vindictive futility.
Of course, I don’t have FBI expertise so I’ll shut up now.
Owen:
But the goal was never to get the documents for the documents’ sake. They knew the documents were not at all at risk. The goal was to get the documents as evidence to get Trump, period.
“One factor that McCord (Mary McCord, national security lawyer under Obama) suggested would be on the minds of DOJ national security lawyers is what Trump might have done with the highly classified material that was still believed to be at Mar-a-Lago. “Are we worried that some of this information would actually be shared outside of Mar-a-Lago, potentially with foreign adversaries? I’d be really concerned about that,” she said.”
This is what the administration is putting out into liberal media — in this case Yahoo News.
This is just a continuation of the “Trump is an agent of Russia.” Many Americans still think Russia helped Trump and he is beholden to them. Vaguely mention espionage charges and what immediate association is made? Russia.
You are watching the Ruling Class lose its collective mind over a man who has not been in office for more than a year and a half, didn’t take his salary when President and likely isn’t drawing a pension. Unless Trump is just a MacGuffin.
Greg Hlatky:
It’s somewhere in between. or rather a combination.
Trump isn’t just a MacGuffin, but he is a symbol, and more. Sarah Palin was a similar symbol before him, but because she never was elected VP that sort of faded. Trump would have faded from their ire, too, if he had lost the 2016 election. His winning was the outrage. They could not believe it, and he MUST BE STOPPED from ever winning again. Not just him, though; any Republican who isn’t part of the genteel NeverTrumper club. Any Republican who might really be serious about stopping them and especially about draining the so-called swamp. It is a deadly serious game and they are determined to win.
Trump himself said it, and he was correct: “They’re not after me, they’re after you – I’m just in the way.”
What happened a year ago tonight the afghan debacle shepherded by all the characters in this witchhunt
You are watching the Ruling Class lose its collective mind over a man who has not been in office for more than a year and a half…
Greg Hlatky:
I believe I understand what you are saying.
However, I’d flip that around and say the Ruling Class is quite correct to lose its mind over Trump. He (and we) are extremely dangerous to their Elite Project.
With Obama they came very close to sewing up the US into the Elite Project. With a Hillary victory it would have about been in the bag.
Then along came Trump in 2016 and his surprise victory with the Deplorable vote. Since then it’s been Dirty Trick after Dirty Trick. They can’t go back to pretending they are ordinary Democrats or liberals. They’ve let the mask slip all the way down. It can’t be unseen. They are radical authoritarians and worse.
After the 2022 and 2024 elections, if they can’t lie, cheat, rig, game the system, they will be wiped out worse than Nixon Republicans after Watergate.
The good news is that they are afraid and, I would say, desperate.
Indeed
https://mobile.twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/1558231586423726082?cxt=HHwWhICjqefX-Z8rAAAA
“The minute the president speaks about it to someone, he has the ability to declassify anything at any time without any process.”
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/may/16/james-risch/does-president-have-ability-declassify-anything-an/
Read Three Felonies a Day. Also Ham Sandwich Nation.
The Feds can get indictments against anyone they want any time they want. Especially when they are willing to commit fraud in manufacturing evidence of guilt. Given that, Trump must be the cleanest politician in US history after all the spying and investigations.
The more we learn about the raid, the more pathetic Garland and the rest of Biden’s stormtroopers look. I know they think their voters are brain dead (and they have a lot of reason to think it), but trying to justify this partisan witch hunt as legitimate law enforcement is way too much.
Greg Hlatky … Huxley has a good point.
Those who are part of the societal and/or political elites are all-in invested in their elite status – financially, professionally, politically, even in terms of reputation and their own self-esteem. They have built their ENTIRE lives around being perceived as the elite.
But this perceived value depends upon US continually needing … and therefore deferring to … them and their “superior” guidance. Hence the motivation to encourage its imposition as The One True Way in every area, through both social pressure and in some cases the coercive force of law.
They think that their investment buys them the authority to lord it over everyone else.
Donald Trump, in word and in policy, dissented from that paradigm. His policies instead expanded respect for and protection of individual liberty – including the liberty to depart from that One True Way when it doesn’t work for us as individuals.
That erodes the perceived value of elite status in this society. Which is a big reason why the elites were motivated to the point of collusion, to tear him down.
Pingback:The Left Always Considered Trump an Illegitimate President