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

[Crumpets]

The Ben Collins tweets pretty much cover this, but this is probably the highest level of vitriol I've seen on the right-wing web since the lead-up to January 6th.

[Crumpets]

Yeah, watch it turn out this article actually got it right way back when:

https://www.theonion.com/deutsche-bank-begins-removing-possessions-from-white-ho-1834776775

[Crumpets]

We have a Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_of_Mar-a-Lago

[Crumpets]

Personally, if I had to pick between the FBI investigating random low-level political activists or ordinary families and just constantly raiding the houses of former officials and high-ranking politicians, I'd pick the latter any day, and I really can't imagine why that would be controversial with anybody. If we have to have a domestic intelligence agency, let them go raid Chappaqua and wherever the Obamas are living nowadays. Go raid Crawford and heck, maybe check to make sure Jimmy Carter didn't stash any docs from Operation Eagle Claw in the walls of some house he built with Habitat for Humanity. All good with me. If you are elected to assume all the power of the Presidency, you should expect your life to be under constant scrutiny - from the feds, from the media, from everyday citizens, from your own family - from that point until your dying day.

[Crumpets]

Garland: "I personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant in this matter."

[Crumpets]

https://twitter.com/highbrow_nobrow/status/1557815276988686338

[Crumpets]

https://twitter.com/highbrow_nobrow/status/1557815276988686338

Dumb this down for us morons, Crumpets

Bratt is the top prosecutor in charge of cases related to foreign relations, national security, spying, and military tech. Could just be DoJ crossing their Ts and dotting their Is by getting all the top folks to sign off or it could give us some idea of the direction the DoJ suspects this case could be heading. Impossible to say which until we get more info.

[Crumpets]

Yah Trump really can’t object to this

Well, if this is right, he may want to keep that inventory hidden:

https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1557839391141289986

The Top Secret classification applies to information "the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security." For more information:

Examples of Top Secret information are currently given in National Security Council (NSC) regulations concerning FOIA requests for classified documents. Those examples are "armed hostilities against the United States or its allies," "disruption of foreign relations vitally affecting the national security," "the compromise of vital national defense plans or complex cryptologic and communications intelligence systems," "the revelation of sensitive intelligence operations," and "the disclosure of scientific or technological developments vital to the national security."7 Those examples in NSC regulations are the same those used in EO 11652 and are also found in the DoD Information Security Program Regulations.8 A 1964 DoD instruction provided more-detailed examples of information that might require Top Secret classification. Some of those examples are as follows:

https://sgp.fas.org/library/quist2/chap_7.html

Click the link in the quote to see the actual examples, which are exceptionally serious stuff.

If Trump had Top Secret documents in his possession, he's cooked.

Off-topic, but remember when Dick Cheney made up a new level of "classification" specifically for unclassified documents he didn't want other people to read by just stamping them "Treated as Secret/SCI" even though that was meaningless?

[Crumpets]

What I don't understand is what exactly did Trump expect to do with these documents.

This is why I don't buy this. Why would Trump want to help our advisaries? Doesn't make sense.

Remember, Trump still thinks he legitimately won the 2020 election and surrounds himself with sycophants who whisper things in his ear about how any day now SCOTUS will overturn the election and he'll be reinstated as President. It doesn't even have to come down to what he was planning to do with these docs as a private citizen, but whether he just wanted to ease the transition back to being President when the time comes or even to keep them from illegitimate usurper Biden.

[Crumpets]

Fox is showing a video of a fire in Portland during the 2020 protests right now, if anyone was wondering.

[Crumpets]

I'm going to make a prediction: if the main narrative on the right becomes "the FBI planted evidence," Trump will inevitably put out a statement saying something to the effect of "Of course I had a bunch of secret nuclear docs! The FBI violated my rights by taking them from me!"

[Crumpets]

Oh, also worth noting a big talking point among the Trump supporting crowd right now is that there was some report the FBI agents went through Melania's closet, so of course we have to assume they were all perverts and/or crossdressers who wanted her clothes. Sigh.

[Crumpets]

Y'all aren't ready for when it turns out the docs are an extensive record of Saddam Hussein's nukes that the US found and disposed of in secret after the invasion.

[Crumpets]

The only correct take on this whole debacle I've seen so far from one of the great sages of our time:

https://twitter.com/jon_bois/status/1557900541254156288

[Crumpets]

https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1557934998782631936

[Crumpets]

There's always a Tweet.

[Crumpets]

https://twitter.com/AlexanderSoros/status/1558146862435155968

[Crumpets]

I hadn't put it together until just now, but Tucker Carlson has been on vacation all week.  No wonder Fuzzy Bear has been absent from this thread, and why conservatives at large have been either silent or scrambling for something to talk about.  Poor folks must be totally lost at sea!  Great timing for your vacay, Tucker.

Rest at ease, I think tonight is the night Tulsi is covering for him, which should be just as much of a spectacle as Tucker's return.

[Crumpets]

https://usrimg-850.fark.net/n/np/fark_np_n8OzA6X7_y8wdzZug5XBFuGM.png

My guess is even if Trump gets convicted he would not be put in the regular prison system . The DOJ probably would use an abandoned military base or even a property of his and then just fence it off .

Maybe to assuage Trump's ego, we can give him the Napoleon treatment and just make him Emperor of Niihau. He got 100% of the vote there, so he could be surrounded by fans for the rest of his life.

[Crumpets]

We're sure that he was aware of them in light of the NYT's report just now:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/13/us/politics/trump-classified-material-fbi.html

In the spring, the Justice Department issued a subpoena to Mr. Trump seeking further documents believed to be in his possession. He was repeatedly urged by advisers to return what remained, despite what they described as his desire to continue to hold onto some documents.

Incidentally, such being the case helps neuter DT's point from a few days ago about how the warrant was apparently unnecessary overkill on account of the "cooperation."

Perhaps he took them by accident and, realizing what he’d done, tried to pretend they didn’t exist. It’s not that I think Trump isn’t stupid enough to purposely make off with nuclear documents (he absolutely is), but this isn’t something I imagine him doing without some clear incentive or financial gain. What is to be gained from having these documents?

I’m not sure he was even thinking in those terms. I think he just thought “I want to have these, they belong to me” and took them like souvenirs.

Yeah, of all the possibilities, this seems most likely to me. Think of Trump's mindset when he was having people pack up the White House to move out back in January 2021. He was 100% convinced he was going to be reinstated as President at any moment. He can't let Sleepy Joe get his greasy hands on all these juicy nuclear docs! They're not even his! He stole the election! Best keep those close by for when he gets called back up to the majors.

[Crumpets]

From what I've learned from years of watching Death in Paradise, if they take your passport, you're either the murderer, or you're going to be in the room during the big reveal of who the murderer is so the detective can build suspense.

[Crumpets]

https://twitter.com/NorahODonnell/status/1559312970173259784

[Crumpets]

Has anyone just tried holding the document up to the light to try to decipher the text under the blacked out parts?

Well it's digital so black is black.

Then maybe we can try highlighting it with a cursor. Sometimes they really are that inept.

[Crumpets]

Is it possible to either put jurors through the security clearance process or just get a jury of only those of adequate clearance level?

If it really is (totally hypothetically) something like second-strike plans against Russia and China or invasion contingencies for a war against Canada, I can understand why you would want literally no one to see the documents except for only the senior-most levels of government, but if that is the case, does the specific content of the documents really drive the prosecution? Like, can the prosecutor not just say "these documents were found at Mar-a-Lago, and as you can clearly see, they are labeled as Top Secret in this photo taken during the raid." And just leave it at that?

[Crumpets]

https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1564817957762498566