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

[GALeftist]

You love to see it. Lock him up!

[GALeftist]

Remember when Democrats were evil for not supporting this guy’s re-election?
https://twitter.com/repmeijer/status/1557038135799943171?s=21&t=8-FSjHs-K6Sk...

This seems to have United the Trumpers and Never Trumpers

Oh, gimme a break. Show me one person who flipped from voting D to voting R because of this, or even one person who cares about this who wasn't already a 100% lock to vote Republican in the midterms, then we'll talk. Yes, that includes Hogan. Yes, that includes Tulsi. Yes, that even includes Yang.

The reason Dobbs has backfired on Republicans is pretty simple imo: it unites Democrats, wins independents, and divides Republicans. In this day and age I'm probably right of the median Democrat on abortion; independents pretty overwhelmingly view Republicans as extremists on the issue; and Republicans have a substantial pro-choice minority. Regarding the Mar a Lago raid, maybe it unites Republicans, but I'd have to imagine it unites Democrats to the same extent, and independents are pretty sympathetic to Democrats on the whole "Trump is a criminal" angle.

I can't believe I'm going against the thread grain for once, but by my appraisal, it's perfectly reasonable to demand an explanation when such unprecedented actions are taken.  It doesn't necessarily mean that Trump and friends aren't guilty of criminal actions, but it speaks more to the transparency that should exist. 

I do understand the thought process here but in my opinion this would actually be a pretty serious infringement of Trump's rights. After all, he hasn't been charged with anything yet. What if they found evidence that clears his name during the raid, or they go on to find such evidence? In my opinion, with Trump as with everyone else, the details of this should be revealed if and when he is charged and not a moment before.

[GALeftist]

Even Larry Hogan tweeted this :

https://twitter.com/GovLarryHogan/status/1557071758447951878

But he's supposed to be a moderate, right?

He absolutely is a moderate

Feeding into the false narrative that Biden had the FBI raid Trump's house for no reason is not moderate. It's a crazy conspiracy.

More importantly, even if he is a moderate, who cares? You're a fool if you think Hogan, and by extension voters like him, weren't gonna vote for congressional Republicans before this. What, are they gonna vote harder now? I don't even think Hogan's gonna muster up a Cox vote after this.

[GALeftist]

I can't believe I'm going against the thread grain for once, but by my appraisal, it's perfectly reasonable to demand an explanation when such unprecedented actions are taken.  It doesn't necessarily mean that Trump and friends aren't guilty of criminal actions, but it speaks more to the transparency that should exist.  

The problem is that people are trying to falsely accuse Democrats have raiding Trump's house over nothing when that simply isn't the case. And with that said the only person owed an explanation immediately was already notified. You all want to blame Biden, Clinton, Pelosi, etc. but you are radio silent on the fact that Trump can release the warrant now. It's not going to hurt anyone to wait for the authorities to detail what all this is about.

No PQG and Larry Hogan in that tweet is just asking for transparency and really that shouldn’t be such a hard demand to agree to

OSR, let's imagine that Wray releases a letter, say, a couple weeks before the election, in which, in an attempt to increase transparency, he says that the FBI has "learned of the existence of [documents] that appear to be pertinent to the investigation" in the aftermath of the raid. This fuels existing speculation that Trump was knowingly or unknowingly providing classified documents to enemies of the United States, causing Democrats to overperform in the midterms. November comes and goes and now it turns out that they aren't gonna charge Trump with anything after all. In your opinion, would this be better or worse than the FBI just keeping their mouths shut?

(This is a purely fictional hypothetical. Any similarity to actual events or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. Unless...?)

[GALeftist]

https://twitter.com/RealKyleMorris/status/1557124532485427201

Not sure if this is the best place to put this but the feds took Scott Perry's phone

[GALeftist]

Watch in awe as the Republican hacks on this site effortlessly pivot from "Garland's refusing to release more details on the raid is ending our democracy" to "Garland's releasing more details on the raid is ending our democracy." Most of these people have a lifetime of experience at this, they're professionals at this, masters of their craft. I'm still reeling from how quickly the push to find the Dobbs leaker faded from the discourse after it became clear that it might have been a conservative!

[GALeftist]

What do you think is in it that would be damning enough for people to bail on him? The 74 million voters he got in 2020 when he lost?

There are at least 74 million terrible adult citizens in the US, yes.

#ARAB #AllRepublicansAreBad #All74Million #SorryNotSorry

Gee I wonder why you guys are unable to appeal to people who don’t vote for you guys .

The other top thread on USGD right now is a deranged right winger trying to take down the Cincinnati FBI with lethal force and here you are complaining that a Santander post is excessively alienating. OK 👍

[GALeftist]

RIP Mar a Lago bump, August 8, 2022 - August 10, 2022. You led a short, sad, and very fake life

I'd like to issue a formal retraction, I was completely wrong on this and I'll own that. The raid will probably measurably benefit Democrats

[GALeftist]

So on face value if this was true, the FBI just allowed nuclear documents to sit in the Mar a Lago for 18 months..

Or no one noticed they were gone.

Do you ever get tired of working as a Trump spin doctor for free? Garland literally just said today that they had exhausted every other option to get the documents back before finally seeking a warrant.

[GALeftist]

It is pretty funny that the line of defense Trump apologists seem to have settled on is "The crime that Trump committed was so heinous and dangerous that the FBI should have taken action against him far sooner." Good work selecting a President for the world's sole remaining superpower, guys. Perfect choice.

I suspect this will eventually spiral off into a bizarre QAnon-tier conspiracy theory about how the FBI planted the documents and intentionally waited until midterm season to get them back. I hope that most Americans have enough brain cells to deduce how absurd it is that a Trump appointee would hatch this plan, but honestly I don't even know anymore. Very possible that Larry Hogan gets eviscerated in Iowa in 2024 for refusing to pledge to hang Christopher Wray for treason.

[GALeftist]

Gotta say folks, I am starting to think this one may have just been a bad egg from the jump. Starting to think maybe not the best choice for leader of the free world. Starting to think orange man bad, even.

[GALeftist]

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

[GALeftist]

Underrated villain in this story is McConnell. After January 6th there was genuine political will to impeach and convict Trump, disqualifying him from ever holding office again. Trump would 100% never be in a position to do any of this stuff ever again. There'd be some short term pain with a base revolt, sure, but like all things it would pass. Conviction got 7 votes even without McConnell on board, he was practically its only obstacle. But he didn't convict. He couldn't. Because he was so scared of the judges Biden might appoint if he didn't win the midterms. And now, instead of this whole thing capping off the disgraceful career of a universally recognized failure of a president, we're probably going to have to deal with trying a man ~40% of the country reveres as a God for espionage.

[GALeftist]

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.

[GALeftist]

I have a question for the people still going with the "Trump could mentally declassify these documents without telling anyone" schtick – what if Biden declassified these documents mentally without telling anyone? Do you see how stupid these things get if you reduce a type of document classification to a purely philosophical and fundamentally unknowable state of being?

[GALeftist]

I don't really get the point of baiting Fuzzy and his ilk here. Sure, it's funny to watch people make complete fools of themselves defending Trump as the evidence in this case is frankly painfully unambiguous, but come on, it's Fuzzy. It's not like he wasn't doing that before. In my opinion it's mostly sad to see that grown adults have had their brains rotted to such an insane degree, and yet more evidence of why I hope they lock Trump up for the rest of his natural life, so that our nation and our fellow Americans can begin to heal in his absence.

[GALeftist]

One can argue this, yes.  One can also argue that Nixon should have made the kind of stink about stolen elections in 1960.  The irregularities in both the city of Chicago and specified counties in Texas (one would have to get a copy of Six Crises to find the specific counties were gross irregularities had occurred.  (I remember one of them as being Fannin County, TX, but there were some others.)   

The investigations into Nixon were not about finding a crime to charge him with; they were about specified abuses of power, one of them being obstruction of Justice, in which his own Counsel to the President, John Dean, testified under oath that he committed.  This was bolstered by the disclosure by Alexander Butterfield that Nixon had a taping system.

The double standards are obvious.  Hillary Clinton had classified material that she did not have the power to declassify that got onto Anthony Weiner's phone.  She got away with less than a "My Bad!".  Those irregularities involved specific material, but it was no big deal to anyone here that she was never prosecuted.  Indeed, BILL Clinton (arguably) obstructed justice in his time on the tarmac in a plane with Loretta Lynch.  This was overt obstruction of a criminal investigation, yet no one has called for BILL Clinton to be investigated (or Loretta Lynch, for that matter).  The selective outrage is telling, and many of you have, for literally YEARS on this Forum, called for Trump to be arrested, charged, tried, convicted, and jailed, without specifying charges (or specifying matters that have been proven false over time, such as most of the Muller Report nonsense).  That's not how it works.  But a governent that can actually do what they've done to Donald Trump can do so with YOUR favorite elected official, should the political tides change. 

And that's where I'm at with this.  In many matters, Trump has been less than his Own Best Friend.  But the conduct of those "prosecuting" (actually persecuting) him shows a minimal regard for the Rule of Law, for the standards of honesty in obtaining FISA Warrants, for the idea that a Congressional "investigation" such as the January 6th Committee is supposed to have a definitive LEGISLATIVE purpose behind it, that the CONGRESS does not have the power to simply investigate alleged crimes with no legislative purpose, and that Warrants for Searches and Arrests are limited in scope and present probable cause that a crime of a specified nature has already been committed.  That's not what has happened here, but people will keep telling themselves otherwise.

If they can do it to Trump, they can do it to you.  If they can do it to you, they can do it to me.  Am I afraid of a government, regardless of party, that can throw the 4th, 5th, and 14th Amendments out the window because someone has to be "gotten"?  That WOULD be a different country than the one I grew up in, and it is the type of country that people come from other parts of the World (legally and Illegally, I might add) to get away from.

I'll say no more.  I'll let the facts come out.  Nothing will surprise me.  And Donald Trump should not get away with criminal activity just because some of his adversaries did.  But if Donald Trump IS actually convicted of a crime (and I'll believe it only after the entire process is played out), then a two-tiered system of Justice, politicized to the max, will have been formally implemented.  That will not be cause to celebrate.  It will deter good men from seeking the Presidency, but it will not deter scoundrels, and particularly those scoundrels whose adult lives have been about nothing but politics.

[GALeftist]

Trump may still have a diplomatic passport. I think ex-presidents are often allowed to keep them as a courtesy