FBI search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago (Update: Trump Indicted!)

[emailking]

maybe, at least it's staying in May.


What the woodworker saw: Trump documents trial may put resort workers on witness stand, sources say

A plumber, a maid, a chauffeur and a woodworker are among Mar-a-Lago staffers and contract workers who federal prosecutors may call to testify against former President Donald Trump and his two co-defendants at their upcoming criminal trial in Florida, according to multiple people familiar with the investigation.

CNN has assembled a comprehensive picture of how prosecutors are structuring their case against Trump over his mishandling of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago.

While some of the witnesses who may be called to testify hail from Trump’s inner circle, including his career in business, as a political candidate and from his time in the White House, other potential witnesses are the types of workers rarely noticed by Mar-a-Lago’s wealthy guests, according to the sources.

Other likely witnesses also include Trump Secret Service agents, former intelligence officials, as well as people who were in the room with Trump when he was captured on multiple audio recordings referencing a military document about potential plans to bomb Iran, according to the sources.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/09/politics/mar-a-lago-documents-case-witnesses/index.html


Trump's thoughts:

Fake News CNN just did a story, leaked by Deranged Prosecutor Jack Smith and his massive team of Radical Left Lunatics, that various people saw papers and boxes at Mar-a-Lago. Of course they did! They may have been the boxes etc. that were openly and plainly brought from the White House, as is my right under the Presidential Records Act. I even supplied, upon request, Security Tapes to these Election Interfering Thugs. Is this really “Breaking News?” No, it’s “Breaking Fake News.” But what about all of the papers, boxes, and documents found at NUMEROUS Crooked Joe Biden places, like his garage floor by his cherished Corvette, or CHINATOWN where it was just learned that boxes moved freely in and out. He doesn’t come under the Presidential Records Act because he wasn’t President at the time. Deranged Jack Smith has spent over $100,000,000 investigating me on this phony Russia, Russia, Russia, type Scam. How much $’s have they spent investigating Crooked Joe on his much bigger boxes deal?

[GeorgiaModerate]

I'm not optimistic that the trial will actually start in May.  There is still a lot of potential delay built into the classified discovery process.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I'm not optimistic that the trial will actually start in May.  There is still a lot of potential delay built into the classified discovery process.

The trial will not be starting in May. Cannon has delivered for Donald.

From the docket:

PAPERLESS ORDER denying without prejudice 219 Motion for CIPA Section 5 Notification. As stated in the Court’s November 10, 2023, Order 215, “[a]ll previously remaining deadlines in the Court’s July 21, 2023, Order are superseded except calendar call and trial.” The Court “reset[] the first set of pre-trial deadlines” as indicated on pages 8 and 9 of that Order 215 and scheduled a conference on March 1, 2024, “to address remaining deadlines.” To the extent the Special Counsel’s motion seeks reconsideration in part of the Court’s November 10, 2023, Order 215, that request is denied. CIPA Section 5 deadlines, and all other pre-trial deadlines not included in the first batch of pre-trial deadlines contained in the Court’s revised schedule 215, will be set following the March 1, 2024, scheduling conference.

She's not even going to start setting deadlines for Donald's requests for classified information until after a conference on March 1st, 2024.

Yes, in theory, she could start hurrying things along then, but this order makes it clear that she will delay as long as possible for her cult leader.

edit: fixed docket link

[Tekken_Guy]

I'm not optimistic that the trial will actually start in May.  There is still a lot of potential delay built into the classified discovery process.

The trial will not be starting in May. Cannon has delivered for Donald.

From [ur=https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67490070/united-states-v-trump/?page=2l]the docket[/url]:

PAPERLESS ORDER denying without prejudice 219 Motion for CIPA Section 5 Notification. As stated in the Court’s November 10, 2023, Order 215, “[a]ll previously remaining deadlines in the Court’s July 21, 2023, Order are superseded except calendar call and trial.” The Court “reset[] the first set of pre-trial deadlines” as indicated on pages 8 and 9 of that Order 215 and scheduled a conference on March 1, 2024, “to address remaining deadlines.” To the extent the Special Counsel’s motion seeks reconsideration in part of the Court’s November 10, 2023, Order 215, that request is denied. CIPA Section 5 deadlines, and all other pre-trial deadlines not included in the first batch of pre-trial deadlines contained in the Court’s revised schedule 215, will be set following the March 1, 2024, scheduling conference.

She's not even going to start setting deadlines for Donald's requests for classified information until after a conference on March 1st, 2024.

Yes, in theory, she could start hurrying things along then, but this order makes it clear that she will delay as long as possible for her cult leader.

Can Jack Smith try to get her removed?

[emailking]

Not for scheduling.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Marcy Wheeler has a guide to how much time Cannon is buying her cult leader:

[Tekken_Guy]

Marcy Wheeler has a guide to how much time Cannon is buying her cult leader:

If Cannon does push the trial past the election, that could allow GA to move up.

[GeorgiaModerate]

One of former president Donald Trump's current attorneys told special counsel Jack Smith's team that, within days of the Justice Department issuing a subpoena last year for all classified documents at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, she "very clearly" warned Trump that if he failed to fully comply -- but then swore he did -- "it's going to be a crime," according to sources familiar with the matter.

Sources said the lawyer, Jennifer Little, told investigators Trump "absolutely" understood the warning, which came during a pivotal meeting at Mar-a-Lago with Trump and another attorney, Evan Corcoran, who had recently joined Trump's legal team.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/attorney-warned-trump-crime-comply-subpoena-classified-docs/story?id=105228569

[emailking]

Former Mar-a-Lago employee-turned-witness repeatedly contacted by Trump and associates before documents charges

Three months after the FBI seized classified records from Mar-a-Lago last August, a longtime employee of Donald Trump’s private club quit his job.

Within days, the former president did something he rarely did – Trump called the former employee on his cell phone to ask why he was leaving after two decades of working at the resort, according to two sources and material seen by CNN.

The employee told the former president he had another business opportunity he wanted to pursue. The message later got back to the former employee that Trump thought he was a “good man.”

But he wasn’t just any staffer at the club – the former employee was a witness to several episodes special counsel Jack Smith included in his federal criminal indictment charging the former president with mishandling classified documents.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/12/politics/former-mar-a-lago-employee-special-counsel-trump/index.html

[emailking]

Jack Smith Reminds Aileen Cannon the Clock Is Ticking on Trump

Special Counsel Jack Smith on Tuesday pressed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to grant his request for a speedy trial in former President Donald Trump's classified documents case for the ninth time.

...

Prosecutors have repeatedly argued against Trump's request for a delay, saying that it is in the public's best interest to conduct a speedy trial. Cannon, a Trump appointee, has agreed to revisit the trial schedule in March, potentially delaying prosecution until after the 2024 election. Tuesday's filing from Smith served as a reminder about the current trial timeline—such reports are required under the Speedy Trial Act, read the document.

Smith noted in his filing that the court has already ordered that the current trial timeline applies to Trump's co-defendants in the case, Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira. Prosecutors also wrote that pretrial procedures have already tolled the speedy trial clock—under federal law, a speedy trial "must commence within 70 days from the date the information or indictment was filed, or from the date the defendant appears before an officer of the court in which the charge is pending."

https://www.newsweek.com/jack-smith-reminds-aileen-cannon-clock-ticking-trump-1855618

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/1568651557171757057

The boxes are the same, too:

https://twitter.com/peterstrzok/status/1568569532377186306

The idea that he hid documents in Ivana's coffin looks slightly less like a joke now.

Ivana just keeps turning up. Beyond the news of the FBI's counterintelligence investigation of her in the 1990s, Marcy Wheeler has recently pointed out that the SDNY apparently deliberately danced around Ivana's involvement with Giuliani associate (and convicted felon) Lev Parnas:

Yet SDNY limited the temporal scope of this warrant to postings starting on October 1, 2015 — effectively excluding only the photo of the dog and some event with Ivana trump six months before Parnas started insinuating himself into Trump’s political orbit, one pertaining to Fraud Guarantee.

    To the extent materials are dated, this warrant is limited to materials created between October 1, 2015, which is the month in which it appears Parnas first posted a photo related to a political event, to the present.

Did Ivana have some pre-existing relationship with Lev Parnas, one that dates to months before Lev started serially insinuating himself into Donald Trump’s orbit?

And if she did, why didn’t SDNY want that photo?

[Ferguson97]

https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1746121303424114962

[Landslide Lyndon]

Will this be appealed?
Will the appeals court just let this slide?

[GeorgiaModerate]

Will this be appealed?
Will the appeals court just let this slide?

Our resident lawyers may correct me, but I do not think scheduling decisions can be appealed.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

Will this be appealed?
Will the appeals court just let this slide?

Our resident lawyers may correct me, but I do not think scheduling decisions can be appealed.

I do have a question for the lawyers, defendants have a right to a speedy trial but should a defendant waive that could prosecutors still try to push for a speedy trial?

[emailking]

NAL but speedy trial applies to both sides, public has a right to a speedy trial too and Smith has pushed for that in both cases. There are exceptions and this case is one because of all the steps that have to occur dealing with the classified evidence.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Special counsel questioned witnesses about 2 rooms FBI didn't search inside Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence: Sources

Special counsel Jack Smith's team has questioned several witnesses about a closet and a so-called "hidden room" inside former President Donald Trump's residence at Mar-a-Lago that the FBI didn't check while searching the estate in August 2022, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

As described to ABC News, the line of questioning in several interviews ahead of Trump's indictment last year on classified document charges suggests that -- long after the FBI seized dozens of boxes and more than 100 documents marked classified from Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate -- Smith's team was trying to determine if there might still be more classified documents there.

According to sources, some investigators involved in the case came to later believe that the closet, which was locked on the day of the search, should have been opened and checked.

As investigators would later learn, Trump allegedly had the closet's lock changed while his attorney was in Mar-a-Lago's basement, searching for classified documents in a storage room that he was told would have all such documents. Trump's alleged efforts to conceal classified documents from both the FBI and his own attorney are a key part of Smith's indictment against Trump in Florida.

[emailking]

Trump Documents Case: Jack Smith Warns Judge Cannon Could Expose Witnesses To ‘Significant And Immediate Risks’ By Unsealing Names

A federal judge’s order to unseal names in the case against former President Donald Trump for retaining White House documents could result in witnesses facing “threats, intimidation, and harassment,” Justice Department prosecutors warned late Thursday, after Trump asked the DOJ to turn over a range of unredacted documents as part of discovery in the case.

Special counsel Jack Smith, who’s overseeing the DOJ’s investigation, filed a motion in response to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ruling that prosecutors have to submit documents in the case without redacting witnesses’ names and other information that the government fought to keep private.

The judge claimed Smith had not given enough legal basis for the documents remaining sealed or redacted, though she did allow national security information to remain private.

Smith asked Cannon, a Trump appointee, to reconsider her order, arguing that revealing witnesses’ names could expose them to “significant and immediate risks of threats, intimidation, and harassment,” and there isn’t enough reason for making the names public to justify that.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2024/02/09/trump-documents-case-jack-smith-warns-judge-cannon-could-expose-witnesses-to-significant-and-immediate-risks-by-unsealing-names/


^ if she doesn't go along with this, he might file a motion to recuse. (speculation)

[brucejoel99]

Trump Documents Case: Jack Smith Warns Judge Cannon Could Expose Witnesses To ‘Significant And Immediate Risks’ By Unsealing Names

A federal judge’s order to unseal names in the case against former President Donald Trump for retaining White House documents could result in witnesses facing “threats, intimidation, and harassment,” Justice Department prosecutors warned late Thursday, after Trump asked the DOJ to turn over a range of unredacted documents as part of discovery in the case.

Special counsel Jack Smith, who’s overseeing the DOJ’s investigation, filed a motion in response to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ruling that prosecutors have to submit documents in the case without redacting witnesses’ names and other information that the government fought to keep private.

The judge claimed Smith had not given enough legal basis for the documents remaining sealed or redacted, though she did allow national security information to remain private.

Smith asked Cannon, a Trump appointee, to reconsider her order, arguing that revealing witnesses’ names could expose them to “significant and immediate risks of threats, intimidation, and harassment,” and there isn’t enough reason for making the names public to justify that.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2024/02/09/trump-documents-case-jack-smith-warns-judge-cannon-could-expose-witnesses-to-significant-and-immediate-risks-by-unsealing-names/


^ if she doesn't go along with this, he might file a motion to recuse. (speculation)

She just decided to not go along with it:

https://twitter.com/jeffgoldesq/status/1756088290867032071
Granted Smith's motion to file the exhibit under seal, but denied his request to file it ex-parte, instead ordering him to provide the sealed exhibit to Trump by tomorrow. Yeahh... it's time to file an emergency 11th Circ. appeal, & that means by midnight TONIGHT. She needs to go. As if the one benchslap for clear error wasn't enough, she now evidently needs a 2nd perma-benchslap for clear error-wrought manifest injustice. Hopefully Smith cites to the Middlebrooks suit to indicate even the defense's view that Cannon has difficulty putting judicial neutrality & higher rulings aside for him.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Trump Documents Case: Jack Smith Warns Judge Cannon Could Expose Witnesses To ‘Significant And Immediate Risks’ By Unsealing Names

A federal judge’s order to unseal names in the case against former President Donald Trump for retaining White House documents could result in witnesses facing “threats, intimidation, and harassment,” Justice Department prosecutors warned late Thursday, after Trump asked the DOJ to turn over a range of unredacted documents as part of discovery in the case.

Special counsel Jack Smith, who’s overseeing the DOJ’s investigation, filed a motion in response to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ruling that prosecutors have to submit documents in the case without redacting witnesses’ names and other information that the government fought to keep private.

The judge claimed Smith had not given enough legal basis for the documents remaining sealed or redacted, though she did allow national security information to remain private.

Smith asked Cannon, a Trump appointee, to reconsider her order, arguing that revealing witnesses’ names could expose them to “significant and immediate risks of threats, intimidation, and harassment,” and there isn’t enough reason for making the names public to justify that.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2024/02/09/trump-documents-case-jack-smith-warns-judge-cannon-could-expose-witnesses-to-significant-and-immediate-risks-by-unsealing-names/


^ if she doesn't go along with this, he might file a motion to recuse. (speculation)

She just decided to not go along with it:

<xit deleted for space>

Granted Smith's motion to file the exhibit under seal, but denied his request to file it ex-parte, instead ordering him to provide the sealed exhibit to Trump by tomorrow. Yeahh... it's time to file an emergency 11th Circ. appeal, & that means by midnight TONIGHT. She needs to go. As if the one benchslap for clear error wasn't enough, she now evidently needs a 2nd perma-benchslap for clear error-wrought manifest injustice. Hopefully Smith cites to the Middlebrooks suit to indicate even the defense's view that Cannon has difficulty putting judicial neutrality & higher rulings aside for him.

She doesn't care - she's gambling that she can get the the list of potential witnessestargets into Trump's hands, OR give her an excuse to toss the case because Smith didn't comply.

Hopefully the 11th Circuit stops her attempt to help Trump ruin these peoples' lives. 

[brucejoel99]

Trump Documents Case: Jack Smith Warns Judge Cannon Could Expose Witnesses To ‘Significant And Immediate Risks’ By Unsealing Names

A federal judge’s order to unseal names in the case against former President Donald Trump for retaining White House documents could result in witnesses facing “threats, intimidation, and harassment,” Justice Department prosecutors warned late Thursday, after Trump asked the DOJ to turn over a range of unredacted documents as part of discovery in the case.

Special counsel Jack Smith, who’s overseeing the DOJ’s investigation, filed a motion in response to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ruling that prosecutors have to submit documents in the case without redacting witnesses’ names and other information that the government fought to keep private.

The judge claimed Smith had not given enough legal basis for the documents remaining sealed or redacted, though she did allow national security information to remain private.

Smith asked Cannon, a Trump appointee, to reconsider her order, arguing that revealing witnesses’ names could expose them to “significant and immediate risks of threats, intimidation, and harassment,” and there isn’t enough reason for making the names public to justify that.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2024/02/09/trump-documents-case-jack-smith-warns-judge-cannon-could-expose-witnesses-to-significant-and-immediate-risks-by-unsealing-names/


^ if she doesn't go along with this, he might file a motion to recuse. (speculation)

She just decided to not go along with it:

<xit deleted for space>

Granted Smith's motion to file the exhibit under seal, but denied his request to file it ex-parte, instead ordering him to provide the sealed exhibit to Trump by tomorrow. Yeahh... it's time to file an emergency 11th Circ. appeal, & that means by midnight TONIGHT. She needs to go. As if the one benchslap for clear error wasn't enough, she now evidently needs a 2nd perma-benchslap for clear error-wrought manifest injustice. Hopefully Smith cites to the Middlebrooks suit to indicate even the defense's view that Cannon has difficulty putting judicial neutrality & higher rulings aside for him.

She doesn't care - she's gambling that she can get the the list of potential witnessestargets into Trump's hands, OR give her an excuse to toss the case because Smith didn't comply.

Hopefully the 11th Circuit stops her attempt to help Trump ruin these peoples' lives.

https://twitter.com/secretsandlaws/status/1756729878341165453

[emailking]

High-stakes closed door hearings over evidence in Trump Mar-a-Lago documents case set for Monday

The classified documents criminal case against Donald Trump and others heats up again Monday with crucial hearings over access to evidence that could impact whether the former president is tried before the November election.

But even then, the proceeding before Judge Aileen Cannon in federal court in Fort Pierce, Florida, won’t be public.

Trump arrived at the federal courthouse Monday morning as he and his attorneys plan to meet for several hours with Cannon in a closed-door hearing without prosecutors present to discuss the case “in detail,” according to court documents. Special counsel Jack Smith’s team will meet with Cannon afterward.

The defense lawyers will argue for access to classified evidence in the case they or their clients haven’t yet seen – and that prosecutors and intelligence agencies seek to keep from them, potentially giving them only summaries of the information because of how sensitive it is, according to the court record.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/12/politics/trump-smith-mar-a-lago-documents-case/index.html


Trump in court today.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/HouseGOP/status/1756774606726123964

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1758225442916442402

[Landslide Lyndon]

I can't believe that this woman is openly auditioning to Trump for a SCOTUS seat and everybody is just sitting down and taking it.