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

[Badger]

If Trump were President and arrests Harris or whoever is up in the polls in 2028, I would rightfully be angry at Trump and hope he never sees power again.

Biden is one of the most authoritarian Presidents in history for being one of the few to arrest his main political opponent. This reason alone is enough to motivate me to vote him out in 2024.

I realize you're a relatively new poster, but I don't remember you posting anything this foolish before, so I'm compelled to ask whether or not you're being sarcastic or serious. I hope the former and it's simply not registering.

[Darthpi – Anti-Florida Activist]

If Trump were President and arrests Harris or whoever is up in the polls in 2028, I would rightfully be angry at Trump and hope he never sees power again.

Biden is one of the most authoritarian Presidents in history for being one of the few to arrest his main political opponent. This reason alone is enough to motivate me to vote him out in 2024.

Prosecuting Trump in a fair trial before a jury of his peers is the reasonable and moderate option. The radical and authoritarian option is one I'm not going to speak here.

[ProudModerate2]

I want to give a Big Thank You to users GeorgiaModerate and emailking (and others), for their consistent updating of threads related to the investigations and legal proceedings dealing with donald trump.

Your postings make it easy for all of us to stay informed with the most important information related to these issues.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I want to give a Big Thank You to users GeorgiaModerate and emailking (and others), for their consistent updating of threads related to the investigations and legal proceedings dealing with donald trump.

Your postings make it easy for all of us to stay informed with the most important information related to these issues.

I would like to redouble these sentiments.

[emailking]

Meadows told special counsel he could not recall Trump ever declassifying Mar-a-Lago docs: Sources
Trump has insisted that he declassified all the materials before he left office.

Appearing to contradict former President Donald Trump's primary public defense in the classified documents case, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has told special counsel Jack Smith's investigators that he could not recall Trump ever ordering, or even discussing, declassifying broad sets of classified materials before leaving the White House, nor was he aware of any "standing order" from Trump authorizing the automatic declassification of materials taken out of the Oval Office, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

Ever since the FBI's seizure of more than 100 classified documents from his Mar-a-Lago estate last August, Trump has insisted that he declassified all the materials before he left office.

...

ABC News has also reviewed an early draft of the prologue to Meadows' book, "The Chief's Chief," about his time serving as Trump's chief of staff for the final months of the Trump White House, which includes a description of Trump having a classified war plan "on the couch" at his office in Bedminster, New Jersey, at a meeting attended by Meadows' ghostwriter and publicist, but not by Meadows himself. The reference to that document being in Trump's possession was removed before the book was published.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/meadows-told-special-counsel-recall-trump-declassifying-mar/story?id=102396159

[Redban]

^ Obviously Meadows wouldn't recall it. Trump's argument (which I honestly find very silly) is basically, "A president can declassify just by thinking about it." So by Trump's logic,  the act of taking the classified documents with him constitutes automatic declassification.

So Meadows comment that "Trump never ordered or discussed it" has nothing to do with Trump's argument

[emailking]

It's true he has said he can declassify it by thinking about it. But he put out a statement that said he had standing order that anything taken to the residence was deemed to be declassified upon removal. I don't think he's ever said this verbally/publically. But he also didn't say they were declassified because he did it in his mind. What he said is that he declassified everything. In any case, if there were a standing order the COS would obviously know about it if anyone did.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

It's true he has said he can declassify it by thinking about it. But he put out a statement that said he had standing order that anything taken to the residence was deemed to be declassified upon removal. I don't think he's ever said this verbally/publically. But he also didn't say they were declassified because he did it in his mind. What he said is that he declassified everything. In any case, if there were a standing order the COS would obviously know about it if anyone did.

I suspect the truth is that he was just too stupid (incurious, ignorant, intellectually lazy) to learn anything about how the classification system actually worked. He's used to doing things the way he wants, and then having enablers "fix" them for him, or just ignoring the consequences until they went away.

Encountering a situation where this doesn't actually work has been a rude shock he probably still can't really internalize. All of the BS he's been emitting since knowledge of his theft went public last year is just variation on the usual Trump toddler tantrum (one of his more common vocalizations) that comes down to "Make it do what I want! Whaaa!"

This is why Smith's charges in Florida are focused on Trump's obstruction. His defense could make a persuasive case that he is far too stupid to have originally taken the documents with criminal intent. But once it was clearly communicated to him that keeping the stolen documents was illegal, and he still went to great personal length to do so, well, either he's a criminal or non compos mentis. (If Cannon wasn't corrupt, it would be a slam-dunk case and over well before the election.)

[emailking]

https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1694099334516642113


This led to the superseding indictment.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1694099334516642113


This led to the superseding indictment.

This is particularly relevant, because the DoJ and Judge Cannon are currently having a legal back and forth over whether or not she should point out to Walt Nauta (Trump's valet, who is also facing charges in Florida) that his lawyer Stan Woodward (who is paid by Donald Trump's PAC) may have some conflict of interest (i.e. hold a Garcia hearing). This appears as the sort of situation where the kind of blatant Trump-favoritism Judge Cannon has previously demonstrated will go over extremely poorly with the 11th Circuit. ("You declined inform a defendant of a conflict of interest that benefits the guy who appointed you to your post? You're off this case," is not an implausible outcome.)

[2016]

https://twitter.com/MaxTwain24/status/1694373349994975445

[Redban]

MaxTwain24 says so on Twitter

Must be true

[2016]

MaxTwain24 says so on Twitter

Must be true

If the Secret Service Protection Act gets amended by a possible Up-and-Down Simple Majority Vote Donald Trump is TOAST!

[GeorgiaModerate]

I'm skeptical of the supposed leak unless it gets reported by more reputable sources.

[Landslide Lyndon]

MaxTwain24 says so on Twitter

Must be true

Says the guy who links Breitbart and Dinesh D'Souza.

[emailking]

I think any attempt to amend the law would have be widely bipartisan for it to be politically feasible. And maybe at some point it will be, who knows. But I think the argument has been made that it's entirely possible for the Secret Service to protect him at a prison somewhere. Granted there's disagreement on that point.

[SteveRogers]

I think any attempt to amend the law would have be widely bipartisan for it to be politically feasible. And maybe at some point it will be, who knows. But I think the argument has been made that it's entirely possible for the Secret Service to protect him at a prison somewhere. Granted there's disagreement on that point.

Nothing needs to be amended in order for Trump to go to prison. Contrary to what some believe, the Secret Service does have the authority to override criminal law and somehow veto a prison sentence.

[emailking]

Well the concern is that they're going to convince the judge he needs to be given house arrest or they can't protect him. I'm pretty skeptical of that, but someone like Cannon might use that logic to give probation or something.

[Yoda]

Meadows told special counsel he could not recall Trump ever declassifying Mar-a-Lago docs: Sources
Trump has insisted that he declassified all the materials before he left office.

Appearing to contradict former President Donald Trump's primary public defense in the classified documents case, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has told special counsel Jack Smith's investigators that he could not recall Trump ever ordering, or even discussing, declassifying broad sets of classified materials before leaving the White House, nor was he aware of any "standing order" from Trump authorizing the automatic declassification of materials taken out of the Oval Office, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

Ever since the FBI's seizure of more than 100 classified documents from his Mar-a-Lago estate last August, Trump has insisted that he declassified all the materials before he left office.

...

ABC News has also reviewed an early draft of the prologue to Meadows' book, "The Chief's Chief," about his time serving as Trump's chief of staff for the final months of the Trump White House, which includes a description of Trump having a classified war plan "on the couch" at his office in Bedminster, New Jersey, at a meeting attended by Meadows' ghostwriter and publicist, but not by Meadows himself. The reference to that document being in Trump's possession was removed before the book was published.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/meadows-told-special-counsel-recall-trump-declassifying-mar/story?id=102396159

File this development under the least surprising news ever. I remember back when MAL was first raided and it was a surprise to all of us, in one of the first news pieces on the raid trump's team had quite obviously quickly cooked up this lie that everything the FBI found there had already been declassified b/c trump had this "standing order", and I remember as I was reading it thinking how this was so obviously a lie cooked up on the fly to try to save trump's hide. Not 100% sure if I'm remembering this correctly, but I think the trump boot licker they got to peddle this lie and actually be quoted in that article was Kash Patel. I wonder if now, all these months later, he is still slinging that lie, or if he only ever said it to a reporter but wised up when the FBI sat him down and asked him about this supposed "order."

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

(Originally posted this in the wrong thread.)

If anyone cares what actual judicial bias looks like, Marcy Wheeler details some of how Judge Cannon is putting her thumb on the scales:

Judge Cannon just gave Woodward another bite at the apple, as well as another six days before his client gets a Garcia hearing, based off Woodward’s claim that he had never seen information DOJ had shared (and which would have been available to Woodward for five days) but then Cannon herself had removed from the record. DOJ did provide this information in its initial motion. But because of actions Cannon took — the judicial equivalent of flushing that information down the toilet — Woodward (after waiting three days himself before first asking Judge Boasberg to share the information) claimed that he had never seen it before.

Things are going to get really testy going forward (if they haven’t already under seal) because, in a filing that DOJ did not first ask permission to file (but which I suspect would be authorized by a sealed order elsewhere in the docket, not to mention general ethical obligations requiring DOJ to inform her of everything going on in DC), DOJ just revealed that Judge Cannon threw out precisely the information that she’s now using to grant Woodward’s request for a sur-reply and — between the three days he waited to ask and the six she granted him to respond — nine more days to delay such time before Walt Nauta might be told about the significance of all the conflicted representation Woodward has taken on.

But I also expect that this will escalate quickly in one or another forum. Aileen Cannon was informed weeks ago of two significant conflicts in the representation of defendants before her, and rather than attend to those conflicts (or decide, simply, that she was going to blow them off, which in some forms might be an appealable decision), she has helped Woodward simply stall any resolution to the potential conflict.

[President Johnson]

I think any attempt to amend the law would have be widely bipartisan for it to be politically feasible. And maybe at some point it will be, who knows. But I think the argument has been made that it's entirely possible for the Secret Service to protect him at a prison somewhere. Granted there's disagreement on that point.

Nothing needs to be amended in order for Trump to go to prison. Contrary to what some believe, the Secret Service does have the authority to override criminal law and somehow veto a prison sentence.

Wouldn't Trump at least be be held custody in a different part of the prison, separated from ordinary inmates? I think that has been done with other high-profile fellons as well. Especially as a safety measure, as he (or any famous prisoner) would be at risk.

[HisGrace]

I think any attempt to amend the law would have be widely bipartisan for it to be politically feasible. And maybe at some point it will be, who knows. But I think the argument has been made that it's entirely possible for the Secret Service to protect him at a prison somewhere. Granted there's disagreement on that point.

Nothing needs to be amended in order for Trump to go to prison. Contrary to what some believe, the Secret Service does have the authority to override criminal law and somehow veto a prison sentence.

Wouldn't Trump at least be be held custody in a different part of the prison, separated from ordinary inmates? I think that has been done with other high-profile fellons as well. Especially as a safety measure, as he (or any famous prisoner) would be at risk.

I talked about this in another thread, I don't see why this needs to be different from people like organized crime figures, informants, or anyone else who is a high assassination risk in prison. Trump could get extra security and be separated from the general prison population. The only reason anyone is pretending this is that complicated is because they want an excuse for why Trump can't go to jail since they can't actually defend his behavior.

[GeorgiaModerate]

A federal prosecutor investigating Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified materials went to the White House in March to interview a staffer as part of the probe — a newly revealed detail that Trump and his allies have tried to latch onto as evidence that President Biden is improperly involved in the case.

On Tuesday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) demanded that top officials provide details of the meeting.

But the interview — of a career White House staffer who had worked for both the Trump and Biden administrations — was a standard part of the investigation, according to two people familiar with the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the criminal probe. The session focused on events that occurred during the Trump administration and, according to one of the two people, was about the handling of boxes while Trump was president.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/29/jay-bratt-trump-white-house-interview/

For those of you claiming this meeting shows Biden was directly involved in indicting Trump in this case (and you know who you are) -- well, you're wrong. 

[Landslide Lyndon]

A federal prosecutor investigating Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified materials went to the White House in March to interview a staffer as part of the probe — a newly revealed detail that Trump and his allies have tried to latch onto as evidence that President Biden is improperly involved in the case.

On Tuesday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) demanded that top officials provide details of the meeting.

But the interview — of a career White House staffer who had worked for both the Trump and Biden administrations — was a standard part of the investigation, according to two people familiar with the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the criminal probe. The session focused on events that occurred during the Trump administration and, according to one of the two people, was about the handling of boxes while Trump was president.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/29/jay-bratt-trump-white-house-interview/

For those of you claiming this meeting shows Biden was directly involved in indicting Trump in this case (and you know who you are) -- well, you're wrong. 

You mean riverwalk was peddling BS?
First time this happens again.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Trump was warned FBI could raid Mar-a-Lago as team feared he'd 'go ballistic' complying with subpoena, lawyer's notes show

In May of last year, shortly after the Justice Department issued a subpoena to former President Donald Trump for all classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Trump's then-lead attorney on the matter, Evan Corcoran, warned the former president in person, at Mar-a-Lago, that not only did Trump have to fully comply with the subpoena, but that the FBI might search the estate if he didn't, according to Corcoran's audio notes following the conversation.

Only minutes later, during a pool-side chat away from Trump, Corcoran got his own warning from another Trump attorney: If you push Trump to comply with the subpoena, "he's just going to go ballistic," Corcoran recalled.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-warned-fbi-raid-mar-lago-team-feared/story?id=102932105

The article contains more details about Corcoran's notes than have previously been released.  Worth a read.