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

[Torie]

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1558150949537021953

I could care less.
Just as long as they keep it away from DC (Capitol, White House, etc).

They are going to be ransacking Mar-a-Lago looking for FBI agents?

[Torie]

There is a reason the NYT is number one:

"The search warrant for Trump’s residence cited three criminal laws, all from Title 18 of the United States Code. Section 793, better known as the Espionage Act, which covers the unlawful retention of defense-related information that could harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary; Section 1519, which covers destroying or concealing documents to obstruct government investigations or administrative proceedings; and Section 2071, which covers the unlawful removal of government records. Notably, none of those laws turn on whether information was deemed to be unclassified."

[Torie]

There is a reason the NYT is number one:

"The search warrant for Trump’s residence cited three criminal laws, all from Title 18 of the United States Code. Section 793, better known as the Espionage Act, which covers the unlawful retention of defense-related information that could harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary; Section 1519, which covers destroying or concealing documents to obstruct government investigations or administrative proceedings; and Section 2071, which covers the unlawful removal of government records. Notably, none of those laws turn on whether information was deemed to be unclassified."

Twitter user @KDbyProxy (wonderful follow btw, whip smart, especially wrt this sort of thing) caught this yesterday. Here's the relevant tweet:

https://twitter.com/KDbyProxy/status/1557872185959751681

This seems like a stretch.

They're going to put Trump in jail for ten years for possessing unclassified documents?  That doesn't pass the smell test

I mean, they weren’t unclassified, for one. They were top secret in some cases.

Still seems like a novel application of the Espionage Act when we have a separate law that explicitly deals with presidential records

If Trump has docs that one is only supposed to look at in a secure location that put lives at risk, or compromise important operations, his having those documents, and failing to turn them over, is inexcusable period. If Trump claims he declassified such documents, while obviously a lie, if true means that he is akin to a traitor, comfortable with putting lives at risk.
He's done if any documents of that nature were sitting in his safe, or basement. There is no way to explain away this one, and I don't expect to see any but the nuttiest Pubs, go there, to try to spray perfume on this Trump turd.  

[Torie]

https://twitter.com/steve_vladeck/status/1558210074765660160

Brett Baier on Fox, the last honorable man left standing there, seems to be musing about that. While Garland stated that one tries to keep a warrant as narrow as possible, and use it as a last resort, in fact the warrant rather than narrow was broad as could be, the whole property, and everything related to Trump's presidency, from soup to nuts, and seemingly urgent. The whole property was scoured, other than guest rooms. Something was agitating the DOJ, big time. So he thinks more shoes have to drop.

[Torie]

Attacking a poster not here is infra dig. I dissent. I would far prefer that I were attacked in his stead, as one who is here. I mean that.

[Torie]

Attacking a poster not here is infra dig. I dissent. I would far prefer that I were attacked in his stead, as one who is here. I mean that.

Well, since you asked...

Whattaya mean with that Latin stuff?  You calling us a bunch of pigs or something?  Talk American!!

About 3 score years ago, Bill Buckley taught this particular  Godless and church-less WASP that bon mot.    I have become ever more insufferable since, and I relish going to hell for it. Oh yes, I find the American accent (and sadly I am saddled with the standard one, that originated in the upscale northern suburbs of Chicago of all things - who knew?), flat and boring. In my next life, I want to talk like David Cameron. And I prefer the term "boot" to "hood." Fancy that. Your turn.  

[Torie]

Attacking a poster not here is infra dig. I dissent. I would far prefer that I were attacked in his stead, as one who is here. I mean that.

It's not like he's been banned, or is otherwise incapable of contributing his thoughts like he usually doesn't hesitate to do.  The bodies of the Uvalde children were still warm when he injected his "mah gunnns!!" opinions into that thread, for example.

However, and I say this charitably and earnestly, hopefully he's taking some time away from the internet this week for the sake of his own mental health.  It hasn't been a good week to be a loyal Trump supporter.

David Brooks tonight on PBS just mused the way I did on this very forum after consuming an edible. The odds are higher now that Trump will be elected POTUS from a jail cell. I think American voters by and large suck. So there.

[Torie]

Another Trump lawyer might be biting the dust. Signed declarations are under penalty of perjury. Just why a lawyer would sign such a document is not known.

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

[Torie]

To get the thread back on track https://mobile.twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1558860524837806081

> "Executive" privileged
> By copy of this TRUTH

What?

Also doesn't executive privilege only apply to the current commander-in-chief?

It does.  But there also could be documents that are under attorney-client privilege, and that would not have expired with the end of Trump's term.  The job of a taint team is to exclude such items from the investigation.  I believe there are even some exceptions to attorney-client privilege; our resident lawyers would know more.

I know you all are just itching to learn about the crime fraud exception to the attorney client privilege.  And if you would permit me to go snarky for a moment, that is why I surmise that most of what involves Rudy Giuliani is not subject to the privilege. I think his role pretty much 24/7 was to defraud the court as it were.  

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/the-crime-fraud-exception-the-attorney-client-privilege.html

I would also think that anything involving the attorney client privilege could not at the same time be marked a classified document. I tend to think there is nothing there and Trump is silly buggering again. I agree with you on the taint protocol and that the ship has sailed on Trump claiming executive privilege.

[Torie]

This seems like a stretch.

They're going to put Trump in jail for ten years for possessing unclassified documents?  That doesn't pass the smell test

I'm late to the party here but let me get this straight: according to you, Trump stole a bunch of documents which legally were supposed to return to the government upon his exiting office, including numerous top secret and nuclear documents; used his psychic legal powers asserted by the Heritage Foundation to declassify these documents, without ever communicating that they were declassified; stashed them in his beach house; refused to turn them over to the government for a year and a half, breaking a law which says that keeping government documents carries a legal penalty; and finally gets them snatched back once his beach house is raided. And the part of this saga you find objectionable is that the law Trump broke did not differentiate between government documents which were and were not declassified by Trump's mind powers.

No, that's not what I'm saying.  Stop enjoying listening to yourself so much and consider this nuance:  not all documents presidents are supposed to return to NARA under the PRA would be classified.  If the Espionage Act is being used to potentially prosecute Trump for not returning these records upon "demand of an officer or employee of the United States" then that is prosecutorial overkill.

So you’re arguing that documents pertaining to our nuclear weapons is no big deal for Trump to have and not return?

Do we have confirmation as to the content of the documents and whether they were indeed classified? 

The warrant lists multiple boxes documents as top secret. Obviously their content can’t be revealed, but the less-secret seized documents pertained to Roger Stone’s pardon and the President of France.

I believe the documents were only stamped "top secret" but it's possible they were declassified prior to Trump leaving office.  It will take a review by intelligence analysts to ascertain what the active classification level of the recovered documents really is.

If you may permit me to posit a hypo to you, what would you think if Trump claimed that everything that was still in his possession that has been seized, were documents that he had declassified, and it turned out that some of those documents listed the names of US spies in Moscow, and how the US planned to intercept any nukes that Iran fires towards Israel, so that Israel does not need to fire theirs back?

That is the Trump trap that has been locked shut, and not that it matters for criminal purposes (it's clear now that he did commit felonies, it is just a matter of whether or not he will be prosecuted for them) , but even a man as skillful and pathological a liar as Trump is, is just not going to be able to prevaricate his way out of that particular lock box.

[Torie]

So what's next? What are we waiting on for now?

Immediately?  Review of the collected evidence, but we won't know when that's completed.  I don't believe there are any pending motions in the case; Trump's team hasn't filed any to (for example) challenge whether the search was lawfully conducted.  So I don't think there's anything specific in terms of events or deadlines.  We'll just have to wait and see if there are further subpoenas or search warrants in the case, and eventually for indictments.

My understanding is that if and only if there is an indictment, then Trump gets the affidavit, and can then more to quash the warrant as not having been properly issued, in which event documents obtained pursuant to it, cannot be used as evidence against him in a trial as the fruit of a poisonous tree.

The next chapter of this will be feigned Pub rage that the affidavit is being withheld (it almost always is). The affidavit would disclose what the DOJ has, and might interfere with its investigation, and even if disclosed pursuant to an indictment, may well have to be redacted, given the sensitivity of what it may describe. So it may be that the Pubs will get a free pass to rage on that matter right through the midterm election.

So the next bit of drama will be whether or not Trump in concert with the feigned Pub rage demands that the affidavit be released. If he does not, that would be revealing in and of itself.

[Torie]

One thing is for sure: We are going to reign in Merrick "Craptastic" Garland if Republicans take over the House.

Merrick Snarkland, you are fired.

The House of Representatives does not have the power to fire the Attorney General, cry harder.

The House of Representatives does have the Power to impeach Merrick Garland and I think he will be impeached should Republicans have House Control in January.

Of Course he always could resign before he is impeached.

Do we understand what impeachment means? I would agree that a month ago the Pubs next year would have the votes to impeach a ham sandwich if Trump gave them that marching order, but now I suspect their margin might well be quite paper thin, so McCarthy might ponder whether he might dial back a notch or two in pandering to the Pub crazies, and amoral lean and hungry ones, and those desperate to get to 20 years for a fully vested federal pension no matter how degrading. Otherwise, maybe Torie might be elected Speaker. Yeah, you don't need to be a House member to be elected Speaker. Who knew? 

[Torie]

From the NYT:

The former president has worked to cash in on the search.

Mr. Trump’s political action committee has been furiously fund-raising off the F.B.I. search, sending out at least 17 text messages to donors since Tuesday. “The Dems broke into the home of Pres. Trump,” one read. “This is POLITICAL TARGETING!” another alleged. “THEY’RE COMING AFTER YOU!” a third said.

Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s son, wrote another fund-raising email on Sunday: “The witch hunt continues…The FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago was a DISGRACE. In fact, it’s UNFATHOMABLE.”

And here is an interesting squib from CNN:

"Attorney General Garland needs to provide these materials ... Let us see them," Turner told CNN's Brianna Keilar of the evidence the Department of Justice used to justify a search on Trump's home. "And then we can tell you what our answer is and what our discernment is of whether or not this is a true national security threat or whether or not this is an abuse of discretion by Attorney General Garland."


It causes me to wonder whether the DOJ was told by its inside the Trump world source about specific documents that were most definitely not to be seen outside a secure location, as opposed to something less specific, and whether to cause some closure of this so it does not fester until such time as the DOJ decided whether or not to seek an indictment, Turner and other members of the House intelligence committee can/will be informed more specifically of the nature of the highly sensitive documents that were seized.

Turner (he has represented Dayton Ohio since rocks cooled) has basically asked to see those documents. Turner is a pre-Trump Pub and most definitely not a nutter. The DOJ I think will be under some pressure to make such a disclosure to those who have the requisite security clearance to be informed of such documents and have some entitlement to have more knowledge of them pursuant to their oversight role.

[Torie]

Well, as soon as Garland indicts Trump, the Pub panderers can get all that they are asking for and more. Be patient. I do hope that the House Intelligence Committee is told soon what kind of documents Trump had that are so impeaching for him to have that he will be left with nothing but the FBI planted them all.

Addendum: The judge is holding a hearing this Thursday on unsealing the affidavit.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/16/politics/mar-a-lago-affidavit-request/index.html

[Torie]

It's mine, it's mine, it's all mine!

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/18/us/politics/trump-fbi-classified-documents.html

[Torie]

Judge Reinhart is holding a hearing starting at...well, now...regarding news media requests to unseal the affidavit used to get the search warrant.  Notably, although Trump has called for the affidavit to be released in right-wing media, his legal team has NOT filed anything either in support or opposition to the motion to unseal.

It is extremely unlikely that the judge will agree to unseal the affidavit.  Nicholas Wu (https://twitter.com/nicholaswu12) is live tweeting if you're interested.

Hopefully the judge grills Trump's lawyers on why they have a position that is contrary to what their client has said in public just to embarrass Trump by pointing out he has no clothes. Of course Trump does not really want the affidavit unsealed because of his fear of what is in it.

[Torie]

From what they've said there would be so many redactions that it wouldn't convey anything.

Well, that's what the DOJ said.  The judge may have a different opinion.

I think this is a good middle course for the judge to steer for now.  Let's see what the final product looks like.

It should be remembered that the judge knows precisely what is in the affidavit, so if he could foresee that it would be a redacted mess with nothing revealing, he would not have gone where he is going with this. This is not only a surprise, but a huge surprise. Literally everybody and their mother thought that unsealing was just not in the cards. But Trump time and again causes people to go where they have never gone before. He is never dull.

[Torie]

From what they've said there would be so many redactions that it wouldn't convey anything.

Well, that's what the DOJ said.  The judge may have a different opinion.

I think this is a good middle course for the judge to steer for now.  Let's see what the final product looks like.

It should be remembered that the judge knows precisely what is in the affidavit, so if he could foresee that it would be a redacted mess with nothing revealing, he would not have gone where he is going with this. This is not only a surprise, but a huge surprise. Literally everybody and their mother thought that unsealing was just not in the cards. But Trump time and again causes people to go where they have never gone before. He is never dull.

Torie's analysis is spot on.  Something informative will be released by the time the judge is done with this it appears.

The DOJ is indeed in a state of shock per the NYT:

"The Justice Department did not immediately respond to Judge Reinhart’s ruling, but privately, officials said they were shocked by the decision."

[Torie]

https://twitter.com/hugolowell/status/1560329700836315139

Dusting off a line I've used frequently in this thread: "why?"

(Not agreeing or disagreeing with this decision, just curious as to the legal justification).

My guess is that the judge is trying to balance the public interest (because let's face it, whatever one thinks of Trump, searching the home of a former President is an unprecedented development) against the DOJ's need to keep critical information confidential unless/until an indictment occurs.

Don't be so self effacing. That is precisely what the judge wrote.

[Torie]

CNN throws more on the pyre.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/18/politics/trump-mar-a-lago-fbi-search-hearing-takeaways/index.html

[Torie]

Redacted warrant application was unsealed, including specific descriptions of the offenses Trump is accused of having committed:

-Willful retention of national defense information (bolstering the theory that the documents were nuclear weapons)
-Concealment or removal of government records
-Obstruction of federal investigation

Link?

Just to avoid confusion of the thread readers, the link provided is to but a teaser first course to the "unsealing" - the largely boilerplate wrapping pages covering the beef. The amount of the carcass within that is suitable for consumption by the public, as opposed to  a delicacy reserved only to the legal elites (rank has its privileges), remains to be seen.

[Torie]

https://twitter.com/BradMossEsq/status/1560749455665934336

Is this the long awaited motion to force the DOJ to return to him all that they took?

[Torie]

https://twitter.com/BradMossEsq/status/1560749455665934336

Is this the long awaited motion to force the DOJ to return to him all that they took?

Rumor is they're going to ask the court to appoint a special master to review the documents and decide what the FBI should be allowed to see, although at this point it would seem like a case of locking the barn door after the horse has escaped.  They've had the documents for almost two weeks.

Makes sense. My comment was snarky of course. 

[Torie]

Here is this morning's NYT dose of info on the life and times of documents at MAL of interest:

"On June 22, the Justice Department subpoenaed the Trump Organization for Mar-a-Lago’s security footage, which included a well-trafficked hallway outside the storage area, the people said.

'The club had surveillance footage going back 60 days for some areas of the property, stretching back to late April of this year.

'While much of the footage showed hours of club employees walking through the busy corridor, some of it raised concerns for investigators, according to people familiar with the matter. It revealed people moving boxes in and out, and in some cases, appearing to change the containers some documents were held in. The footage also showed other parts of the property.
In seeking a second round of security footage, the Justice Department wants to review tapes for the weeks leading up to the Aug. 8 search.
…

'The F.B.I. agents who conducted the search found the additional documents in the storage area in the basement of Mar-a-Lago, as well as in a container in a closet in Mr. Trump’s office, the people said."

The attorney who signed the doc stated that she had gone through all the documents in the storage room, and all the ones that had classified markings were being returned in June. Yet the FBI found more per the search warrant in the storage room. Was the attorney careless, or were the documents just not there when the attorney went though them, and they found there way back after her visit but before the FBI's surprise visit?  I suspect all of those on tape entering the storage room in the hiatus period between the Trump lawyer's visit and the FBI visit have had been contacted by the DOJ.

[Torie]

I wonder how Trump gets himself out of this predicament.

Deny and deflect, how he so often got out.

I've become more skeptical that anything just finishes him off entirely. Because it should have happened hundreds of times and still didn't.

Right. If I was a betting man, I'd bet that nothing comes of any of this - J6, the FBI raid, his tax evasion lawsuit in NY, or the GA election probe.

Trump not getting indicted on MAL is close to a nightmare scenario.

Question to Garland. Are you going to indict Trump over MAL? No comment. When are you going to make a decision? No comment? Now that you have all the documents, are you not in a position to make a decision as to the crimes that were listed in the warrant? No comment. Garland, it has been six months now, do you just plan to let the statute of limitations expire with no comment in the interim? Is that the plan? No comment.

In an exchange that happens every week on the NYT between a never Trumper right of center guy, and a Dem, as the never-Trumper put it, it is nice for the government to get the docs back, but if it elects Trump POTUS again, the price is just too damn high. I could not have said it better myself.