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Home » The MAL search affidavit adds essentially nothing

The MAL search affidavit adds essentially nothing

The New Neo Posted on by

As expected.

Prior to its release, I couldn’t imagine why anyone would think that it would actually change anything, given that it was the DOJ doing the redactions and the very same magistrate approving them. However, it will be used in the ongoing political propaganda war.

You can find links to the documents here.

From Jonathan “not a Trump fan” Turley:

And from Joel Pollak of Breitbart News:

I doubt they’re upset about the content of the warrant, deeply or otherwise. They have a plan and they will stick to it, and they think it will help them politically. Even the redactions serve a purpose, and that purpose is to indicate Trump-doings so nefarious that even to mention them would risk US security.

ADDENDUM: Interesting takes can be found here, as well as here and here.

Comments

The MAL search affidavit adds essentially nothing — 45 Comments

  1. I know that I’m preaching to the choir here, but believe nothing, not a word, that comes out of the mouth of any member of this regime. My last full year at State before retiring was under this regime and I have never known a more disreputable gang of liars. Even many of their fellow travelers at State were shocked. The fiasco of Afghanistan opened a few eyes, but most of my colleagues eventually compartmentalized that shitstorm, and continued on as before, loyal to the cause.

    FYI. We all know that far too many gov’t documents are classified. I have seen menus from diplomatic dinners classified, because of course we can’t allow the Russians know what flavor sorbet the Ambo likes (I suppose Garland will come after me now for exposing this). It really is that absurd. When Wikileaks happened we were informed that to look at any of them on the internet anywhere except on a classified system within the embassy was a security violation. Right after this came out the embassy security chief (RSO), the Marine Guard Detachment Commander, and I were discussing it and the Det Commander asked about one of the docs that was being discussed on CNN in the embassy lobby. The RSO and I had to tell him that we couldn’t even comment unless we went upstairs to the CAA (Classified Access Area). All of us, all TS security clearance holders, could have gotten security violations for even watching the discussion on CNN (watching CNN itself should have been the actual violation). Even now, retired, I have to be very careful about what I say or write. Even though much classification is completely legitimate, much is also ridiculous.

    Btw, I had a friend who served on a declassification task force and he told us that getting even one of those dinner menus declassified was a slog. The federal gov’t is broken and is run by evil people. I’ll repeat myself – believe nothing when one of them speaks in an official capacity for this regime. It is the Obama interregnum redux, taken to the next level of lies and the intended destruction of America.

  2. Via Newsweek this afternoon, Alan Dershowitz states that the avadavit reveals enough to sustain an indictment of Trump:

    In an interview with Newsweek, Dershowitz said, “It sounds like there would be enough for an indictment, but like probable cause, an indictment is easy to get,” explaining that prosecutors could simply point to the materials found at Trump’s residence that he had unlawful access to.

    On Friday, Judge Bruce Reinhart unsealed a redacted version of the affidavit, which revealed that the DOJ had been looking into Trump’s mishandling of presidential records since May 2021, when the National Archives and Records Administration first reached out about missing documents.

    The affidavit revealed that of the hundreds of documents at Mar-a-Lago, 25 were marked “top secret,” 92 were marked “secret” and 67 were marked “confidential.”

    ======
    https://www.newsweek.com/affidavit-gives-doj-enough-indict-donald-trump-alan-dershowitz-says-1737467

    EVEN IF SO, how is a prosecution based on a post facto “law” or really Biden dictat going to play?

  3. If only the whole affadavit were leaked. The redacted parts are what they want to hide, which if released would show that they were looking for items they feared would expose their corrupt criminality.

  4. TJ:

    Prosecutors can indict a ham sandwich and I have little doubt they could indict Trump. They could indict you and they could indict me, if they wanted to – I assure you. They only reason they have never indicted him before is that (a) they can’t do it when he’s president (b) they felt he was out of the way and didn’t need to – but now he seemed poised to possibly win again in 2024; and (c) they were afraid too many people who be upset and it would come back to bite them in some way.

    They seem to have changed their minds about (c), in my opinion. Or perhaps they still won’t go through with it, because they think the present search and warrant campaign and the propaganda around it will be enough.

  5. (I put this in another thread, not about the MAL search and am repeating it here)

    Very interesting interview with a former law clerk for Justice Gorsuch, dealing with the debunking the issues with the MAL search.

    I hope this is the proper understanding of the relevant documents he cites.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WacPc7c37fs

  6. I’ve read the affidavit, and it is exactly what I thought. I agree with your assessment, neo. It seems with other information, the current NARA Archivist decided that Trump didn’t properly classify material. This was discussed and decided previously between Trump, NARA, and the DOJ. There is even previous case law in the matter that agreed with the previous agreement between Trump, DOJ, and NARA. But a new Archivist asked DOJ to reconsider, they did, and then the Archivist assumed power to determine to classification, decided what Trump has is classified, and as it is at Mar-a-lago and not a SCIF, it was improperly stored against federal statutes. Thus, Trump committed a crime.

    I wouldn’t disagree with Alan Dershowitz that based on this ruling by the Archivist, Trump can be indicted. The problem is the Archivist assumed this authority despite decided case law. The Archivist didn’t take this back to court for reconsideration. They simply got another DOJ lawyer to make an interpretation of the law. The rest is simple disrespect of Trump, who based on the affidavit and other information was cooperating and has every right to disagree.

    A reasonable solution would be to take this to court for a ruling first on the issue of classification, and if the government prevailed, reclaim the documents. Instead, this will become a criminal trial that will first have to determine the issue of classification, which will take years and Democrats hope it will last beyond 2024.

    I apologize for lack of links and stuff like “it is”, but if I were to put together a brief with proper citations; it wouldn’t matter to either side.

  9. Friday, DAN Bongino parses Zuckerberg’s Bucks for Mail-in ballot corruption and his new admissions to Joe Rogan that Facebook censored news of Hunter Biden’s laptop just before the last election, as a confession, not merely of censorship but proof of Deep State — through the FBI — fixing our formerly “free” elections.

    “We are now third-world country” with respect to rule of law and the unlimited power orphan the state. It’s no longer an argument. It is a fact.

    “The FBI is corrupt” and must go, he says. Soon “they will come for me,” too, he says. “But it’s OK.”

    Anyone care to share this with your Lefty friends? “Our Constitution is now toilet paper” and its “protections” to them, says Bongino. Today’s show:
    https://bongino.com/podcasts

    Kleptocracy and collapse coming by 2028 if the coming elections are won by the Peoples’ Enemies, he says.

    Gripping analysis of in-your-face events.

  10. It all has the same aroma as the lead-up to the two sham impeachments. A sense of inflating the importance of the pretextural information, so that the cries of alarm over what had been ‘discovered’ gain a heightened perceived importance, a little more convincing perhaps, to the casual watcher. But it turned out to be all fluff, pure airy confection, impeachments for non-crimes, so once the partisans had their fun and produced the kabuki show, the issues died a quick death.

    I remember the two impeachments were only accepted as being valid by Democrats and Never-Trumper RINOs, although every effort was made to capture the pageantry of the event for everybody to see – the solemn procession across the Capital building, bringing the sacred documents through the hallowed halls like a high priests, and so on.

    I’m guessing this is building up to the same kind of thing, a made-for-TV drama, all timed for maximum effect on the November election. Is it going to work? We’ve got plenty of inflation right now, why not inflate the drama levels some too?

  11. Some confusion. Newsweek says Dershowitz says there’s enough to indict Donald Trump. Newsmax says Dershowitz says there isn’t. They both probably heard what they wanted to hear. Maybe this is a glass half empty, glass half full situation with enough to get an indictment but not enough for a conviction.

  14. They indicted delay on the third try they indicted mcdonnell (future rapist name escapes me now) was part of the team, and ted stevens, one prosecutor committed suicide over the guilt they were all reinstated so its no small surprise.

  17. Its like that python sketch with the defense against pointed fruit

    Its extraordinary how wretched a regime has metastasized in the last two years

  18. Dershowitz was on Fox tonight and his position is they have enough to indict, but DOJ should never have sought a search warrant.
    I think he has to split the difference so he can get invited on more liberal channels.

  19. It gets curiouser and curiouser, a Lewis Carroll fans would put it.
    Bose seized from MAl stamped with “FISA” markings? So reports Paul Sherry
    https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4088663/posts

    Does this increases the likelihood of Robert Barnes theory mooted some days back, that the raid was conducted by the Deep State to regain control of documents that will hang the FIB, DOJ, the Obamunist Senior Ececutive Service?

    To prevent that deeper guilt on the DS from reigning down on DC?

  20. Raheem Kassan, recent founder of the national file.com, and before that with Breitbart New has weighed in on the affidavit with huge page size photo images on his subtack. It’s EVERYTHING you imagined, he says:

    “The Mar-A-Lago Affidavit Really Does Read As If They Were Confiscating Russiagate Evidence. There are a whopping 413 redacted lines.”
    Raheem Kassam’s Substack. ^ | 08/26/2022 | Raheem Kassam
    Via FreeRepublic
    https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/4088664/posts

    HE ENDS BY ENDORSING ROBERT BARNES THEORY OF THE RAID.

  21. Specifically, he writes “ Which means this now looks like yet another extreme ‘CYA’ effort on behalf of the DOJ, FBI, and Democratic Party apparatus.

    “Russiagate. It always comes back to Russiagate”

  24. Firstly off, the president’s power to classify or declassify information is plenary.

    “The majority ruling in the 1988 Supreme Court case Department of Navy vs. Egan — which addressed the legal recourse of a Navy employee who had been denied a security clearance — addresses this line of authority.”

    If Trump told the bag boy on the first tee that the contents of that truck over there are declassified that is sufficient – even if the response was “no comprende senor”.

    Secondly, there are numerous questions about the validity of the warrant – specificity, actual crimes, authority of a magistrate.

    Thirdly, I suspect that this whole shebang is orchestrated by Trump. This is beyond 4-D chess. This is no-limit hold-em.

  25. I think there clearly is enough to indict. The affidavit was written to make that happen. It points to the law about classified information, how to properly store it, says that Trump had classified information, and if Trump did, I’ll agree he was improperly storing it. The question of criminality is whether the information is classified. Read Roy Lofquist on Trump’s authority to classify and declassify anything as President. The Archivist’s argument is she has authority to determine what is and is not classified, not the President. This question should be handled in a civil lawsuit. Partisan bureaucrats are trying to handle this as a criminal trial.

    You don’t have to like the idea of being handled as a criminal trial, but it seems clear that is what the partisans are attempting to establish and very likely will accomplish. The interesting thing is if they succeed, because there is no statute of limitations on mishandling classified information.

  26. National archives where sandy berger walked in stole documents destroyed other those are safe spaces pshaw

  27. @leland,

    An indictment is only brought for a criminal act. Congress explicitly declined to make violation of the records act a crime. The opinion that the president has plenary power over the classification is not mine rather it is a summation of several legal analyses of the holdings of SCOTUS in more than one case. No act of Congress or regulation promulgated by an agency or, indeed, an executive order by another president can modify the powers granted to the president by the Constitution. The archivist has no authority or standing to argue criminality.

    Trump could shut all this down in a hurry. If he wanted to. He doesn’t.

  28. IIRC, all classification authority comes from the President. Every document that is classified by a USG official is only classified based on a delegation of authority from the President. Similarly, declassification authority is delegated from the President.

    Declassified documents are supposed to be marked to indicate they have been declassified or downgraded, and the date and authority. If they are not so marked, one must presume they are still classified. But since the President can classify and declassify material, his say-so should settle the matter. Perhaps the case could be made that since Trump left office he no longer had that authority, but that is beyond petty.

    But take note of the reporting we are seeing about the MAL raid: they say “documents were retrieved that had security markings.” Did they also have markings to indicate they had been declassified? We will never know. That’s convenient — for those trying to make Trump appear to be the law-breaker.

    After retirement I took a part-time assignment in the State Department’s FOIA office. We were explicitly told we were NOT to use classification to cover up State’s embarrassing items. If a record was NOT of national security concern, it could be declassified. I cannot tell you how many records I reviewed that were clearly classified to hide something that was not a matter of national security.

    Bottom line: security classifications are seriously abused.

  29. Roy Lofquitpst — it all turns in the issue of: can a subsequent President summarily reverse the de-classification of documents or not?

    Biden counsel says he did so and he can. Scholars we’ve referred to here say that it is doubtful that Biden (or Obama) can, nor should they want to engage in tit for tat, for reasons that ought to be obvious and delimitation. No longer.

    Nonetheless, the issue has not been court tested. Not yet.

    And that seems to be the political Rabbit Hole want to go down to generate yet another Trumpian “scandal.”

    This, to me, is both outrageous, nauseating, and boring.

  33. Biden counsel says he did so and he can.

    Under the heading of ‘instructions for putting the toothpaste back in the tube’.

  34. Does it not appear that D. J. Trump was never President of the United States? Seems to me facially obvious this is the position of the Biden Administration, which understands itself as possessed of the powers to make it so. And with this stance the Biden Administration is proceeding relentlessly to make it so, as well as assure — as Michael Anton has pointed out — that D. J. Trump cannot be “elected” President in future. That’s the “plan”. That’s what we see.

  35. @Art Deco,

    Trump could shut all this down in a hurry. If he wanted to. He doesn’t.

    ??

    As far as I can tell Trump is benefitting from this situation. Reportedly his fund raising is up and indications are that support for his agenda has increased. This is from polls and primary election results. The MSM (NYT, WAPO, WSJ) are falling all over themselves trying to find loopholes in the security laws to justify the raid but their efforts smack of desperation. As I have hinted at before, I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump didn’t instigate this himself by planting some disinformation with the FBI.

  37. Roy, I agree with you on it being court tested. The Archivist and whoever they queried at DOJ says otherwise. I’m making an additional point that if you wanted to take the Archivist position, then the appropriate way to handle this would be for NARA to sue FPOTUS for return of the information and let a federal court decide the question of authority over classification. The decision to make this criminal is why moderates and some on the left find this outrageous. That’s the part of this that goes beyond silly political games of scandal to banana republic.

  38. I agree that President Trump could end all this, if all this is about Crossfire Hurricane documents, regardless of whether or not Biden reclassified them.

    The logical conclusion is more than these documents are at play.

    If this is all about Crossfire Hurricane, Biden and the deep state have known this from the day President Trump got on Trump Force One.

    So why did they wait until now? Maximum political damage? It seems the activity to get them back began sometime around the time Trump filed a $24 million federal lawsuit “alleging that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee launched a wide-ranging “unthinkable plot” in 2016 to smear him and his campaign as colluding with Russian officials.”

  40. A United States Army LT Colonel, O5, falsified testimony to get his superior, his Commander in Chief, the United States President, impeached.

    His defense was that his CiC, the President, was going against the interagency, his word, not mine.

    Think about that and all the implications.

    This is why we are here, period. Our government is an elitist, non-elected, gaggle of asshats who have been allowed to believe they, and only they, determine policy, law, trade, and war.

    This predates Trump. Trump was just the lightening rod. Trump spoke Truth to Power.

  41. Colonel scheller by contrast was reprimamded for the criminal handling of the afghan evacuation

  42. Does this increases the likelihood of Robert Barnes theory mooted some days back, that the raid was conducted by the Deep State to regain control of documents that will hang the FIB, DOJ, the Obamunist Senior Ececutive Service?

    I agree that this is the motive for the raid and I agree that the lawsuit (which the DOJ federalized) was the trigger. I just hope Trump has copies hidden somewhere.

  43. Assuming the United States survives, there are going to be some fascinating books written about this era. The psychological/emotional dynamic at play here is both bewildering and enlightening. There were 100+ ways the American establishment could have responded to Trump. The way they chose was constant escalation which served to exacerbate virtually ALL of the factors which led to Trump.

    It’s like they were hitting themselves in the head with a hammer, suddenly noticed they were bleeding, and decided to keep on doing it even harder.

    Mike

  44. This really feels like the Archivist is going for the “I’m a National Hero” award.

    First, government lawyers had already been through the boxes. If there was something in them that compromised grave danger to the security of the U. S., they would have taken them then, as they did with others.

    They are down to the dregs. Another visit could have dealt with the remainder.

    But, but, Garland is under pressure from the White House to GET Trump! So now we have this whiny civil servant, and it’s easy enough to get a DOJ lawyer to write a memo saying, “But the law!”

    A proper memo would have included, “But courts have ruled over and over that the President can declassify whatever he wants, and if Trump says he did that, we have no evidence that he did not.”

    That memo might also have included a passage that noted that when Obama had a dispute with the National Archives, his library was allowed to buy an indulgence.

    Now we’re all used to Republicans being the dumb asses, and we forget that Democrats are dumb asses also, and what’s more, they cannot see straight for their hatred. The grownups like Barr and Mueller (yes, he was one, once) are gone, baby. The people who would have tossed that memo across the table and said, “Go back and start over, sunshine, and write a proper one,” they’re retired.

    And the damage is done. No matter what happens from here on, Democrats will claim that Trump had nuclear codes at MAL. I knew that was bullshit from the start, because such things are not kept in White House file cabinets. They’re in a binder in that chart case that the military aide carries. And when Joe said, “So help me God,” Trump’s aide handed that case to Biden’s aide. And the codes were changed, probably within the hour. But Democrats will forever insist that Trump had them.

  45. “sdferr on August 27, 2022 at 11:25 am said:
    Does it not appear that D. J. Trump was never President of the United States?”

    That’s what they’d like to make history look like.

    I had a thought sparked by the last line or two in the RedState piece that Neo linked.

    What if this is basically a pissing contest? Remember that the people doing these things are obsessed with status signals, and also obsessed with proving the illegitimacy of Trump’s Presidency. I would not be surprised, if you could get in the heart and mind of the Archivists, to learn the entire purpose of this raid is to *deny Trump material he would like to have to establish a Presidential Library*, and nothing more. They can’t ex post facto forbid it but they can put up tons of roadblocks and execute lawfare to try to stop it from happening.

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