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

[GeorgiaModerate]

How about shortening some of the quote strings?  It's getting difficult to follow the thread.

[GeorgiaModerate]

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.

Given the potential national security implications, it would be entirely reasonable and appropriate for the DOJ to brief the House Intelligence Committee, of which Turner is the ranking minority member.

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1559158554988249088

[GeorgiaModerate]

It's now confirmed: There is collusion between this Investigation and the January 6 Investigation.

"Trump's crimes overlap" is perhaps not the defense you think it is.

[GeorgiaModerate]

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.

The only provision of the Espionage Act that he's actually being accused of violating merely concerns the unauthorized retention of national defense information. Just because it's called the "Espionage Act" doesn't mean that the DoJ is acting as if he transmitted state secrets to hostile nations because, flashy title aside, it's still one of its provisions that criminalizes the willful mishandling of these documents, which is still, y'know, a blatant federal crime even if/when it doesn't rise to the level of active, spy-like espionage. So if he's alleged to have not only retained & mishandled records that he was unauthorized to retain, but then willfully concealed his retention & mishandling of such documents from investigators, then where exactly is this supposed prosecutorial overkill that you speak of? What's wrong here??

Any charge under the Espionage Act is prosecutorial overkill because there is separate legislation that regulates presidential records, and Trump should be charged under that statute as he once had presidential custody over the documents in question (which is not a situation the Espionage Act was written to consider, per the legislative history of the act.) 

…

The search warrant literally cited that separate legislation, 18 USC 2071, the PRA. "Whoever, having the custody of any such record… willfully and unlawfully conceals [or] removes… the same, shall be fined… or imprisoned not more than three years, or both." You clearly seem to misunderstand how criminal investigations work, because when an investigation into potential instances of one crime, like violating the PRA, uncovers evidence of not only such violations but also of other crimes, like violating the Espionage Act & concealing the violations of both acts from investigators, then the accused will be liable for those actions too.

And yes, his alleged actions clearly fall under the purview of 18 USC 793, the section of the Espionage Act concerned, if, in undertaking those actions, he was retaining information related to the national defense that could be used to injure the U.S. or to the advantage of a foreign government without the necessary authorization to retain such information. That's a blatant violation of the provision at hand, not something that wasn't considered within the legislative history of the act, & we know that because it's been consistently prosecuted, except without the initial good-faith effort to treat the accused with a great amount of deference in light of their former job & figure all of this out cooperatively.

The Espionage Act is only at play here because the DOJ believes certain documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago contain "national defense" information (whatever that means.)  A former president or anyone else retaining presidential records is a violation of the Presidential Records Act, and should be prosecuted as such.  A lesser charge under the PRA is entirely appropriate given a "great amount of deference in light of [Trump's] former job" and no indication that he was attempting to transmit the information to hostile governments or individuals.

No offense, DT, but the cognitive dissonance that's being displayed here by you right now is frankly staggering. If I didn't know any better, then I'd presume that you were actively trying to portray a caricatured exemplification of the party of "law & order" & "national defense" now ironically being the party that doesn't give a sh*t about either at the altar of Donald Trump. Wow.

The only cognitive dissonance to see here are those giddy to defend the DOJ's heavy-handed approach here while the likes of Sandy Berger and Hillary Clinton were given great deference and administrative slaps-on-the-wrist for similar mishandlings of classified info.

Two wrongs don't make a right.  But different treatment for two equal wrongs is a third wrong, especially if AG Garland's high-minded rhetoric from last week about the "evenhanded application of the law" is to be believed. 

But those previous investigations were under previous administrations; Garland can hardly be blamed for how they were conducted.  If you think the consequences for Clinton and Berger were too light, then why would it be a good idea for them to set a precedent for subsequent investigations?

[GeorgiaModerate]

But those previous investigations were under previous administrations; Garland can hardly be blamed for how they were conducted.  If you think the consequences for Clinton and Berger were too light, then why would it be a good idea for them to set a precedent for subsequent investigations?

I don't think the outcome for Clinton was too light, but she seems to have been afforded a great deal of investigative and prosecutorial deference that Trump isn't getting.  Keeping classified information on an unsecured email server is functionally equivalent to keeping it at Mar-a-Lago.  It appears in neither case was there an intention to transmit or leak classified information to bad actors. 

What is the ideal level of investigative and prosecutorial deference that Trump should be getting? Should that change if he lies to the people investigating him about having cooperated?

I haven't seen any reporting to indicate that the execution of a search warrant was necessary to recover potentially sensitive documents from Mar-a-Lago.  Trump and his lawyers had already voluntarily complied with a request from NARA and a subpoena from the DOJ.  I can't find see a reason why cooperative methods of resolving a document dispute had been exhausted.   

Because after the return of some materials in January, the subpoena and the June meeting that resulted in more being returned, Trump's lawyer certified that there was nothing else left.  But there *were* more classified documents still there, which the DOJ was informed about.  Since Trump's team had clearly demonstrated that they were *not* returning all the documents voluntarily, it was completely reasonable to go in with a search warrant.  If they had asked again, why would they expect Trump's team to cooperate fully and return every remaining document, when they hadn't the previous times? 

1. (Jan) NARA: give us back the documents.  Trump: OK, here are the documents.
2. (May/June) DOJ: you didn't give back all the documents.  Here's a subpoena for the rest.  Trump: OK, here are the rest.
3. (Aug) DOJ discovers still didn't give back all the documents.  Gets a warrant and goes in to retrieve them.

You seem to be saying they should have repeated step (2).  Why would they trust Trump's team yet again, when it didn't work previously?

And yes, Trump's lawyer who signed the certification that there were no classified documents left should be looking for a lawyer of their own.

[GeorgiaModerate]

This was not heavy-handed. Heavy-handed would have been enacting the raid a year and a half ago and arresting Trump immediately. They gave Trump and his legal team many opportunities to return the documents and only did this because they repeatedly refused to hand them over and lied about it.

What indicates Trump has been uncooperative with records requests?  He voluntarily returned 15 boxes of records to NARA in January.  Reporting is that his lawyers were cooperative when the FBI later executed a subpoena on June 3rd, and they took custody of additional documents at that time.

Please keep up or please shut up:

https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1558281457768038400
https://twitter.com/BradMossEsq/status/1558484552653357056
And that's just from what we know based off of the public reporting alone. Imagine what DoJ already knows that we don't.

The letter from Kim Jong-un is one that Trump already voluntarily returned to NARA in January.  It doesn't matter that Trump mistakenly or ignorantly believed it was his to keep if he ultimately complied with a request to return it.

The contents of this "written statement" are unknown and the sources who leaked its alleged presence to the press couldn't even say which of Trump's lawyers had signed it.  If the lawyers believed to the best of their knowledge that all classified info had been returned, then that isn't an obstruction of justice.  

"Imagine what the DOJ knows that we don't"?  Probably not much.  The DOJ of the past couple of years is notoriously loose-lipped.  As much as you and partisans would wish otherwise, there's no smoking gun contained anywhere in the DOJ's official statements or what's been verified in leaks to the press thus far.  

But why would they believe this? Did Trump lie to them? Or did he just have so much top-secret information stashed away in his house that he just forgot about a bunch of it? Because I don’t know which is worse.

Trump probably has a lot of records from his time as president stored at Mar-a-Lago, many of which he would be entitled to retain.  It's not that unusual that his attorneys would not have a complete inventory of the tens of thousands of documents, letters, photographs, etc. in his possession.

Yes, but this is why presidential records first go to NARA to be sorted out.  Nobody cares much about any letters, photos, etc.  What they care about is having sensitive national security docs in an unauthorized location (in a place known to employ foreign nationals, yet.)

Nobody from Trump's side has yet answered all of the key questions:

1. Why did he take the classified documents?
2. Why did he not return all of them, when it is clear that efforts were made to retrieve them and his team certified they *were* all returned?
3. What did he do with them while in his possession, and what was he planning to do with them?

[GeorgiaModerate]

Wait, is that real? Because that'd be huge if his passports were taken away!

And mistakenly, or intentionally?
Because if intentionally, then that means they're afraid he could be a flight risk.

Surely the passports wouldn't be sitting in storage boxes.  The initial reports mentioned that Trump's safe (a logical place to keep them) was searched, so I suspect that's where they were found. 

[GeorgiaModerate]

Pennsylania man charged with threats to kill FBI agents after Mar-a-Lago search

[GeorgiaModerate]

Wait why does he have so many passports? Is he a dual citizen??

It's not a big deal to have two active U.S. passports (which since one is expired, is all he has).  See https://money.cnn.com/2017/11/01/news/economy/manafort-multiple-passports/index.html.  More than two is unusual, as noted in the linked article about Paul Manafort.

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/neal_katyal/status/1559280821424586755

[GeorgiaModerate]

If his passports were actually taken wouldn't that mean the DOJ is on the verge of charging him

Not necessarily.  I just read a possible innocuous explanation from a legal expert:

https://twitter.com/BarbMcQuade/status/1559278332767772681

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/BradMossEsq/status/1559636636530515971

If this is true, I think we now know why the obstruction-related statue was included.

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1559981304824963074

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/lizbrownkaiser/status/1560021262000324608

[GeorgiaModerate]

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.

[GeorgiaModerate]

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

[GeorgiaModerate]

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.

[GeorgiaModerate]

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.

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1560616254867644417

[GeorgiaModerate]

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

[GeorgiaModerate]

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.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Trump could be found guilty and while he's being hauled off to prison, Woodbury would be saying "Trump's got this!  It's all part of his plan!"

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/AWeissmann_/status/1561823698184716288

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1561818639791116289