They say they found some classified information in the papers they took from Mar-A-Lago…

The New Neo Posted on by

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.

Here’s today’s news:

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.

A little blog glitch…

The New Neo Posted on by

…happened for about an hour. Hope it’s settled now. It had to do with a plug-in problem and made it impossible for me to get to the blog.

I thought I’d take the opportunity to remind you that if the blog ever goes down for any significant amount of time, I’m still able to post (at least, so far) at the venerable old venue: https://neo-neocon.blogspot.com/ .

Right now everything is working here again, though.

Salman Rushdie stabbed

The New Neo Posted on by

He was about to give a lecture in upstate New York when a man ran up to the podium and stabbed him many times. We haven’t been told Rushdie’s condition, but apparently he is alive. The attacker is in custody, and we haven’t been told anything about him although we can certainly guess.

When I read the news, my first thought was, “Are we in a time warp?” I thought how long it’s been since the fatwa was issued by Khomeini against Rushdie (33 years), and that if the fatwa was the attacker’s motive – which is the obvious assumption till proven otherwise – how patient those who would carry it out. I wrote at some length in 2015 about the Rushdie fatwa, which had been officially issued in February of 1989 and established a duty on every Muslim to kill him – although the Iranian government has retreated from it in recent years. The fatwa included the requirement to kill anyone related to The Satanic Verses’ publication, as well, and one of Rushdie’s Japanese translators was murdered in 1991 because of it, and two other translators survived murder attempts.

With all of that background, I wonder how the attacker got into the venue with a knife. What kind of security does Rushdie have at this point? Originally he went into hiding for nine years, and in recent years he’s made appearances but I can’t imagine that anyone thought the threat was over. And yet someone was allowed into the lecture venue with a knife of some sort, and also was able to rush the stage. It puts me in mind of the killing of former Japanese prime minister Abe, or the would-be attack on Lee Zeldin, in which the attackers got very close to their targets.

Here’s hoping he survives.

Merrick Garland speaks

The New Neo Posted on by

And doesn’t say much, which is no surprise.

The most interesting thing he said – which is also no surprise, although it seemed to contradict the Newsweek story I wrote about earlier today – is that he personally approved the Mar-A-Lago raid.

Of course he did, as was already obvious. So I guess the “Christopher Wray did this on his own” story had a very brief shelf life.

Another thing Garland said was that copies of the warrant and the inventory “were provided to” Trump’s attorneys at the site (let’s assume that “provided to” means the more conventional given a copy of rather than merely shown a copy of). There had been conflicting reports earlier about whether the Trump forces had ultimately received those things, and some denials that they had. At any rate, all of it is sealed right now so my assumption is that until the documents are officially unsealed, they would not be allowed to reveal their contents anyway. Garland also said that the DOJ has asked the court to unseal them, but it seems to me that could have been done long before this if the DOJ had wanted to do so.

Garland spent a lot of his rather short speech testily defending the integrity and fairness of the FBI and the DOJ – ignoring the history of Russiagate, the Hunter Biden laptop coverup, the Flynn persecution, and a host of examples of politically-based differential justice in recent years. So that dog won’t hunt, and his feigned or real outrage about “recent unfounded [sic] attacks on the professionalism of the FBI and Justice Department” convinces no one not already convinced. And it only adds to the contempt for Garland himself that he does not even acknowledge the overwhelming evidence of bias in these agencies.

Here are his remarks:

[ADDENDUM: Victor Davis Hanson on the “fairness” of the FBI.]

[ADDENDUM II: Here’s a succinct summary of Garland’s statement that I found in a comment at Legal Insurrection: “Yeah, we raided Trump, I OK’d it, and my FBI storm troopers are all boy scouts.”]

Something happened at a Russian air base

The New Neo Posted on by

And we don’t know how or why:

Russia’s Saki Air Base, safely tucked away 120 miles or more behind the front lines, lost as many as 10 warplanes and various buildings in a series of explosions on Tuesday — but how it happened remains a mystery…

Saki (sometimes spelled Saky) was thought to be unreachable by Ukraine’s missile forces, and it’s certainly too far behind the lines to get hit by Ukraine’s artillery.

But maybe the Ukrainians used this weapon? Or maybe a Russian screwup?:

…[T]he Russian Ministry of Defense claimed on August 9 that munitions had been detonated at a storage site at the airfield due to negligence, not an attack, and claimed that no aircraft were damaged. Russian milblogger Rybar claimed on August 10 that the explosion was likely not caused by a missile strike and hypothesized that the explosions could be due to negligence and non-compliance with safety regulations or to a small helicopter with a bomb attacking a nearby parking lot.

Clear as mud.

More Trump raid fallout: is there anyone on earth naive enough to believe the DOJ on this?

The New Neo Posted on by

From Newsweek:

The raid on Mar-a-Lago was based largely on information from an FBI confidential human source, one who was able to identify what classified documents former President Trump was still hiding and even the location of those documents, two senior government officials told Newsweek.

The officials, who have direct knowledge of the FBI’s deliberations and were granted anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters…

So we can assume these are FBI and/or DOJ agents leaking this story. What portion of it is the truth is unknown, of course – after all, this is the FBI, folks. They lie to us; we don’t get to lie to them.

But either way – true or false – the disclosure of the “confidential human source” is almost as shocking as the Mar-A-Lago raid itself. If true, it means there’s a mole in Trump’s inner circle, perhaps planted, encouraged, and paid by the FBI. So yes, they’re still spying on him and now they’re bragging about it? I’m sure some people would be pleased with this, but only those who already hate him. I think even some of the mild haters or the lukewarm would feel uneasy about it, as it underlines the corrupt nature of the FBI as a modern-day Democrat spy agency.

And if false, why would the agents believe this would be a good cover story? Well, it explains how they got the information to obtain the search warrant, but its “unprecendented” nature is almost certainly offputting and frightening to quite a few people, including those who aren’t huge Trump supporters but who see that this is something that can happen to anyone who opposes the left, and even perhaps to them. It seems – to use a quaint phrase – un-American.

More:

FBI decision-makers in Washington and Miami thought that denying the former president a photo opportunity or a platform from which to grandstand (or to attempt to thwart the raid) would lower the profile of the event, says one of the sources, a senior Justice Department official who is a 30-year veteran of the FBI.

Excuse me? If true, that’s one of the single stupidest calculations I’ve heard in quite some time. And if false, it’s a lie of transparent absurdity.

Next:

The effort to keep the raid low-key failed: instead, it prompted a furious response from GOP leaders and Trump supporters. “What a spectacular backfire,” says the Justice official.

Republicans pounce! Actually, it wasn’t and isn’t just Republicans. Are the DOJ and FBI so dense and out of touch they didn’t see the backlash coming, or is this just more blah blah BS meant to fool no one?

And this next paragraph is theater of the absurd:

“I know that there is much speculation out there that this is political persecution, but it is really the best and the worst of the bureaucracy in action,” the official says. “They wanted to punctuate the fact that this was a routine law enforcement action, stripped of any political overtones, and yet [they] got exactly the opposite.”

Is he or she joking? Tweaking and teasing us with statements so ludicrous a child would find them laughable? I know that the Soviet used to do that and perhaps that’s the point here – to tell us the most prepostorous lies as a sort of mockery. But in case the agencies were truly that clueless, let me just say that it is glaringly obvious to all but the most partisan hacks that this is a political operation and not a “routine law enforcement action,” if only for the simple reason that nothing of the sort has ever happened before to a former president and possible/probably future presidential nominee and opponent of the current administration.

Next:

“They were seeking to avoid any media circus,” says the second source, a senior intelligence official who was briefed on the investigation and the operation. “So even though everything made sense bureaucratically and the FBI feared that the documents might be destroyed, they also created the very firestorm they sought to avoid, in ignoring the fallout.”

One and a half years those documents were sitting there without being destroyed, the government had paid a visit and looked at them already, Trump’s lawyers were cooperating, Trump wasn’t even home, and suddenly there’s all this urgency that the FBI has to send two dozen or more agents to the home and spend nine hours doing this task? Speaking of which – if the informant told them exactly where everything was, what’s up with the nine hours?

I begin to wonder whether this supposed mole was a double agent, setting the FBI up for an embarrassing failure.

After that, the article goes into a lengthy discussion of the Archives and the Presidential Records Act, but somehow omits that fact that violations are almost never treated as criminal, even then they are usually considered misdemeanors, no potential violator has ever been subject to a raid, and they have never been enforced against an ex-president. Then:

The affidavit to obtain the search warrant, the intelligence source says, contained abundant and persuasive detail that Trump continued to possess the relevant records in violation of federal law, and that investigators had sufficient information to prove that those records were located at Mar-a-Lago—including the detail that they were contained in a specific safe in a specific room.

Ah, that’s why they’re telling us about the supposed informant. This information must have come from that person. Of course, according to Trump’s family, that “specific safe” – which was opened by an FBI safecracker, in a scene apparently worthy of Geraldo and Al Capone’s vault – was empty. I repeat: was the informant setting up the FBI? Or just plain lying? Or non-existent?

“In order for the investigators to convince the Florida judge to approve such an unprecedented raid, the information had to be solid, which the FBI claimed,” says the intelligence source.

Tell us another one – you already used that story up with Russiagate and the FISA court, and we know that the right judge will approve garbage. But I don’t for a moment doubt that the FBI claimed their information was solid.

The construction of this paragraph is a little strange:

Though Trump and his Republican Party allies are portraying the raid as politically motivated, it is likely the unprecedented nature of the raid on the property of a former president will have the greatest reverberation. Even Trump’s political rivals have rallied in condemning the FBI.

In other words, what I think this is trying to convey is that of course Trump allies say it’s political. But one doesn’t have to listen to them or even like Trump to observe that it is political – it’s obvious that it is.

And then we have another preposterous assertion:

The Biden White House says the president was not briefed about the Mar-a-Lago raid and knew nothing about it in advance.

So we’re supposed to be reassured by the idea that the FBI didn’t feel the need to run it by the White House – which I don’t for a minute believe anyway? Note that the statement is not saying that the White House didn’t approve of the general idea of such a raid – just that they were purposely not kept abreast of the schedule and the specific details of this one. And the White House is saying “no comment,” because it can.

Also:

The senior Justice Department source says that Garland was regularly briefed on the Records Act investigation, and that he knew about the grand jury and what material federal prosecutors were seeking. He insists, though, that Garland had no prior knowledge of the date and time of the specific raid, nor was he asked to approve it. “I know it’s hard for people to believe,” says the official, “but this was a matter for the U.S. Attorney and the FBI.”

You got that right – it’s hard for people to believe. And again, it wouldn’t be the least bit reassuring even if it were true, because it would mean the FBI is not just the secret police, but a secret police entity answerable to no one.

Here’s the conclusion of the article:

FBI director Christopher Wray ultimately gave his go-ahead to conduct the raid, the senior Justice official says. “It really is a case of the Bureau misreading the impact.”

Ah, so it was Wray, was it? The buck stops with him? Again, it’s very difficult if not impossible to imagine that’s true. But then again, maybe he is just arrogant enough – as demonstrated by his recent Congressional testimony, prior to the raid – to do such a thing on his own. And they either stupidly “misread” the impact or they jut don’t care about the impact because they believe their power is unassailable.

Another strange thing about this entire episode is that I think quite a few people who thought Trump was full of it when he talked about the 2020 election being stolen might be seeing what the FBI has just done and thinking: Hey, wait a minute; if they are willing to do something like this to stop Trump from running, maybe they really did rig the 2020 election. The intensity of the hatred of Trump and the desperate Ahab-like desire to get him is very much out in the open here.

The other day I quoted a speech that Captain Ahab made just before his fatal last attempt to kill Moby Dick. It seems apropos to quote it again, but this time I’m going to quote more of it:

Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! THUS, I give up the spear!”

The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting velocity the line ran through the grooves;–ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the heavy eye-splice in the rope’s final end flew out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea, disappeared in its depths.

For an instant, the tranced boat’s crew stood still; then turned. “The ship? Great God, where is the ship?” Soon they through dim, bewildering mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata Morgana; only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the pagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea. And now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out of sight.

The lure of the closet

The New Neo Posted on by

Ann Althouse writes:

“We have full access to everything. We can go everywhere.” That was the repeated statement of the 3 DOJ lawyers — who were described as displaying an “arrogant” demeanor — who were present during the Mar-a-Lago raid, according to an eyewitness quoted in “FBI searched Melania’s wardrobe, spent hours in Trump’s private office during Mar-a-Lago raid” (NY Post).

I’m not surprised that a search extends into a woman’s most intimate space — how could searches be effective if the woman’s closet were off limits? — but I recognize that this is something that hits onlookers hard. It makes the government seem more brutal if you picture its agents rooting around in the lady’s underwear drawer.

This is the kind of image that can have a powerfully persuasive effect that transcends reason. I will never forget how — back in the 1980s — Joe Biden conquered the pridefully intellectual Robert Bork by talking about police in the bedroom. Bork pedantically explained his view of the nonexistence of the right to privacy, and Biden just kept making us think about Those cops! In the bedroom!

Earlier today I had read that article in the NY Post about the agents going through Melania’s garments, and the quote by the agents about having “full access” and being able to “go anywhere.” It immediately struck me as a creepy power move, and that the entire episode conveyed, among other things, a sense of violation and was meant to do so. It also made me think of two things, which I was reminded of when I read Althouse’s post.

The first is that many people whose homes have been burglarized have mentioned a sense of invasion and almost sexual intrusion as having been worse than the loss of whatever was stolen. Seeing the ransacked drawers and the possessions strewn around, and knowing that strangers have had access to everything without your being able to do a thing about it, can be almost literally sickening.

The second is this scene from one of my favorite movies:

And on the lighter side:

Trump’s lawyers describe the irregularities of the Mar-A-Lago raid

The New Neo Posted on by

Two of Trump’s lawyers were busy giving interviews yesterday.

Here they are:

It seems that these raids were irregular in a number of ways beyond the obvious fact that the target was an ex-president and leading opponent of the current president. But Biden won’t answer and his press secretary just keeps repeating “no comment”. It’s not a good look for the administration.

Then again, maybe they just wanted some fashion tips when they searched Melania’s wardrobe. It’s reported that the warrant was solely about the supposedly classified material in the home, but of course that’s just the pretext, and it’s a very poor one.

Plus:

A source close to the former president expressed concern that FBI agents or DOJ lawyers conducting the search could have “planted stuff” because they would not allow Trump’s attorneys inside the 128-room building to observe the operation, which lasted more than nine hours.

Is it usual to deny lawyers access if they are at the building?

…[The search] extended through the Trump family’s entire 3,000-square-foot private quarters, as well as to a separate office and safe, and a locked basement storage room in which 15 cardboard boxes of material from the White House were stored.

Feds arrived at 9 a.m. and didn’t leave until 6:30 p.m.

An eyewitness to the raid said all of the boxes were confiscated by federal agents Monday, but it is unknown if anything else was taken as no itemized list of items was provided by the FBI.

No inventory given of what was taken?

Also:

Trump’s attorneys, led by Evan Corcoran, had been cooperating fully with federal authorities on the return of the documents to the National Archives and Records Administration, according to sources…

In May, Corcoran granted access into Mar-a-Lago’s windowless storage room to FBI agents who spent several hours searching through the boxes. Trump stopped by the basement to say hello at one point, says someone who was there.

The same boxes.

Access to the 20-acre private country club is believed to have been granted by heavily armed US Secret Service (USSS) agents stationed at the front gates and toting M4 carbines. Lawyers for the former president, who were caught off guard by the raid, arrived an hour later…

Once inside the air-conditioned, white marble-clad private quarters, agents fanned out to search every room, while shocked staff were instructed by Trump’s lawyers to unlock doors and provide the FBI access to every room, including the sumptuous Versailles Master Bedroom, renovated by Melania two years ago.

Another group of agents, including a professional safe cracker, moved to a separate part of the enormous 1924 Spanish stucco building to search Trump’s office and safe.

The demeanor of the three DOJ lawyers who accompanied the FBI was described by one eyewitness as “arrogant,” and they repeatedly told Trump representatives: “We have full access to everything. We can go everywhere.”

Despite the sweltering 91 degrees temperature Monday, Trump’s lawyers were forbidden by the feds to shelter inside the cool lobby, or to observe the search in any way, but were left outside in the baking sun near a parking lot.

The feds instructed Trump’s representatives to switch off the security cameras but they refused.

So there may be at least some sort of recording, although it depends how many security cameras there are and whether they keep videos of more than nine hours.

Here’s some information about federal search protocol:

The warrant must state with particularity

The person or property to be search
The person or property to be seized, and
The magistrate judge to whom it must be returned…

There are also requirements for how a warrant must be executed. This includes: noting the exact date and time the warrant was executed and an inventory of the property seized. The seizing agents must also either provide a receipt to the person who’s property was searched, or a receipt must be left at the location. The agent executing the warrant must also return it to the magistrate judge, with an inventory of the seized items…

Warrants can be challenged if they are overbroad.

For example, let’s say federal agents are investigating a tax crime committed by Jones, but they get a warrant to search for all documents and seize all computers in the house, regardless of who they belong to, with no connection to Jones or the crime investigated. This is an overbroad warrant and the evidence seized should be excluded, or “suppressed.”…

Agents must also follow the scope of the warrant.

A warrant does not give agents the right to go into someone’s home and search for anything they want. Let’s say agents got a warrant to search for and seize a large safe. While conducting the search, they start looking in desk drawers, and seize documents. In this case, the agents exceeded the scope of the warrant. Anything they take should be suppressed.

Was the warrant actually to search everything? Is that highly unusual? Is it not “overbroad”? The fourth amendment prohibits general warrants and requires warrants that “…particularly describ[e] the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” but if you say it’s the house to be searched and the documents to be seized, is that specific enough? I have no idea. And of course, documents can be anywhere – even in Melania’s pockets, or a safe – so would that be a license to search everything, with no one observing them?

And here’s some news on the magistrate, about something he apparently once posted on his Facebook page:

“Thank you, Robert Reich, for saying what many of us feel, ‘John Lewis is the conscience of America. Donald Trump doesn’t have the moral stature to kiss John Lewis’s feet,’” Reinhart added. “Or, as Joseph Welch said to Joseph McCarthy, ‘At long last, have you left no sense of decency?’”

Another Trump attorney says the search warrant is sealed, but even the ones who finally were allowed to see it say that it was vague and the predicate for the search was redacted.

A mysterious tweet by Andrew Cuomo

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: Legal Insurrection.]

Here’s the tweet:

Now here are my attempts at an explanation:

(1) Cuomo is planning to challenge Newsom for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2024, and is positioning himself as the alternative “moderate” candidate.

(2) Cuomo has a hunch the raid could cause a backlash that would favor Trump, and he wants to sound a warning not to go too far.

(3) Cuomo is so out of the loop these days that he failed to get the memo, and is reacting under the standards of decades ago.

(4) Cuomo wants attention, and this tweet makes him stand out from the pack.

(5) Because Cuomo was finally thrown under the bus by the left, he’s afraid the FBI/DOJ will do something to him resembling what they did to Trump.