Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home for classified nuclear weapons documents – report

Suspected presence of such documents could explain why US attorney general took step of ordering FBI agents into a former president’s house



FBI agents were looking for secret documents about nuclear weapons among other classified material when they searched Donald Trump’s home on Monday, it has been reported.

The Washington Post cited people familiar with the investigation as saying nuclear weapons documents were thought to be in the trove the FBI was hunting in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. They did not specify what kind of documents or whether they referred to the US arsenal or another country’s.

The report came hours after the attorney general, Merrick Garland, said he had personally authorised the government request for a search warrant and revealed that the justice department had asked a Florida court for the warrant to be unsealed, noting that Trump himself had made the search public.

The justice department motion referred to “the public’s clear and powerful interest in understanding what occurred in its contents”.

Trump later released a statement saying he would not oppose but rather was “encouraging the immediate release of those documents” related to what he called the “unAmerican, unwarranted, and unnecessary raid and break-in … Release the documents now!”

Garland’s announcement followed a furious backlash to the search from Trump supporters who portrayed it as politically motivated. On Thursday a man who tried to breach the FBI’s Cincinnati office was shot and killed by police after he fled the scene.

The court told the government to present its motion to Trump’s lawyers and to report back by 3pm on Friday on whether Trump objected to the warrant being unsealed.

The suspected presence of nuclear weapons documents at Mar-a-Lago could explain why Garland took such a politically charged step as ordering FBI agents into a former president’s house, as retrieving them would be seen as a national security priority.

Trump was particularly fixated on the US nuclear arsenal while he was in the White House, and boasted about being privy to highly secret information.

In the summer of 2017 he told US military leaders he wanted an arsenal comparable to its cold war peak, which would have involved a ten-fold increase, a demand that reportedly led the then secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, describe him as a “f*****g moron”. Trump publicly threatened to obliterate both North Korea and Afghanistan.

In his book on the Trump presidency, Rage, Bob Woodward quoted the former president as telling him: “We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before. There’s nobody – what we have is incredible.”

Woodward said he was later told the US did indeed have an unspecified new weapons system, and officials were “surprised” that Trump had disclosed the fact.

Cheryl Rofer, a chemist who worked on nuclear weapons at the Los Alamos national laboratory said there were varying classification levels applying to different kinds of documentation.

“Information about the design of nuclear weapons is called Restricted Data and is ‘born classified’. That means it is assumed to be classified unless declassified,” Rofer, who writes a blog titled Nuclear Diner, wrote on Twitter. But she added: “There’s no reason for a president to have nuclear weapons design information that I can see.”

Among the nuclear documents that Trump would routinely have had access to would be the classified version of the Nuclear Posture Review, about US capabilities and policies. A military aide is always close to the president carrying the “nuclear football”, a briefcase containing nuclear strike options, but it would be unusual for those documents to be taken out of the football.

Another possibility Rofer pointed to is that Trump could have retained his nuclear “biscuit”, a piece of plastic like a credit card with the identification codes necessary for nuclear launch. Those codes would have been changed however the moment Biden took office at noon on 20 January 2021.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/12/fbi-search-trump-mar-a-lago-home-classified-nuclear-weapons-documents-report


Merrick Garland called Donald Trump’s bluff: legal expert

Attorney General Merrick Garland held a press conference on Thursday revealing the Department of Justice has moved to unseal the Mar-a-Lago search warrant and redacted property receipt listing the items seized.

Following the press conference, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig offered his analysis during a CNN interview.

"We essentially saw Merrick Garland call Donald Trump's bluff," Honig said. "So essentially Merrick Garland said, 'Okay, Donald Trump, you're not going to release them, we're going to do it, we're going to put those documents in front of the American public.'"

Honig also explained what he's looking for if the documents are unsealed.

"The warrant typically will list logistical information, place to be searched, usually a general description of items to be searched for, the name of the judge, a deadline by which DOJ has to execute the search," Honig said.

"But it also sometimes has what we call an attachment," he explained. "That attachment typically will list the statutes, the laws that DOJ believes it has probable cause to believe were violated. So that's going to be the first thing I look for. I'm going to look right at that attachment and say do they list the statutes, that's going to tell us what laws could be at play here."

The motion to unseal the documents asks the judge to unseal the search warrant "including Attachments A and B."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

'Are you kidding me?': Former CIA official stunned by Trump keeping nuke docs at 'his beach house'



Appearing on CNN's "New Day" the morning after the Washington Post reported that the FBI was sent to Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence with a search warrant on a tip that he had top secret nuclear documents, a former CIA counter-intelligence official expressed dismay and shock at the most recent turn of events in this week's saga.

Speaking with hosts Brianna Keilar and John Berman, Phil Mudd, who served as an analyst on the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center, said that the former president may have had documents "in his beach house" that he -- in his former capacity -- would have been barred from reviewing.

"I'm going to read the Washington Post reporting here because it's very specific, 'classified documents relating to nuclear weapons, those were among the items the FBI agents sought,'" host Berman prompted. "If those were at Mar-a-Lago, why would the Department of Justice, the FBI, the counterintelligence division of the FBI apparently because that's who signed off on it, why wouldn't they want them at Mar-a-Lago?"

"Well, if you look at the security in a place like the Department of Justice, look at the security in place like at the Department of Energy, compared to a beach house, are you kidding me?" an incensed Mudd replied. "One of the reasons the Department of Justice would have asked from the videos from Mar-a-Lago, ask basic questions you would never have to ask if these documents were properly secured."

"For example, who brought stuff in? Do we have the stuff that they brought in did it disappear on another day?" he continued. "More significantly, who went in that room? I'm going to guarantee you, with national security stuff related to nuclear weapons in there, that people who went in that room not all of them had the appropriate clearance."

"So you don't know what's in there. You don't know who is accessing it. You don't know if those people know how to secure these kind of secrets," the exasperated Mudd added. "I don't know what to say, John. You're keeping nuclear stuff at a beach house that I couldn't review at the CIA Enough said."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

How Merrick Garland turned the tables on Trump — and made Trump's supporters look like fools



After Monday's FBI search of Donald Trump's home at Mar-a-Lago, Trump blasted out the news of the unprecedented intrusion on a former president's residence. He asserted that it was politically motivated.

But late on Thursday, the Washington Post reported that "sources familiar with the investigation" say that "classified documents relating to nuclear weapons" were among the materials the FBI search was seeking. The Post's sources did not say whether the agents found such materials.

One source, however, told the Post that among the 15 boxes of materials recovered from Mar-a-Lago in January was material that included "signal intelligence," that is, "intercepted electronic communications like emails and phone calls of foreign leaders."

The Post report surely caught Trump's allies off guard, after many had amplified his claims earlier this week. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted, for instance, that Garland should preserve all documents relating to the search and clear his calendar for hearings after the midterms if Republicans, as expected, take control of the House.

Sen. Marco Rubio described the warrant-based search as sponsored by "Marxists." After the Post story, it may be awkward watching him wipe that egg off his face.

Republicans had also mounted an unrelenting public pressure campaign to force Garland into a press conference justifying the search. On Thursday, Garland did exactly that, turning the tables on his attackers with the tactical skill and aplomb of Gen. George Patton.

Garland needed to abide by Justice Department norms, which generally preclude discussing details of an ongoing investigation while still responding to the attacks upon him, the Justice Department and the FBI.

At the same time, Garland was also eager to avoid becoming the next James Comey. As I observed in Salon on Thursday, Comey came under intense public criticism, and rightly so, for acting contrary to Justice Department norms about not revealing details about pending investigations of a candidate — Hillary Clinton, of course — during an election season.

The current attorney general rose masterfully to the challenge on Thursday. He established that the department had proceeded by the book. He recounted that, to get the warrant, the FBI's sworn affidavit had to establish to an independent federal magistrate judge's satisfaction that there was evidence of a crime and that the evidence would be found at Mar-a-Lago.

Even before Thursday evening's Post report, anyone paying attention understood that this was no ordinary search warrant. Intruding on the residence of a former president is no small matter. The magistrate judge authorizing the warrant would have applied the most rigorous review to ensure that there was solid evidence of a crime.

News reporting tells us that previous voluntary requests, followed by a grand jury subpoena, failed to produce the classified documents that the government believed had been improperly stored at Mar-a-Lago. So the DOJ took the next necessary step to protect national security.

At Garland's press conference, he also made clear that the Justice Department had no intention to disclose Monday's search or anything about it, until Trump revealed it himself.

Trump evidently had his own reasons, including a perceived fundraising opportunity, for making the search public and blaring out his grievance as a purported victim of government oppression. Predictably, his congressional allies and his political base rallied to him, which may well have energized his presidential campaign hopes for 2024.

Here is where Garland turned the tables on Trump and seized the high moral ground. Acknowledging the public statements made by a Trump representative about the search, Garland announced on Thursday that the Justice Department had moved in court to unseal the search warrant and allow it to be made public, making clear that he would not have done that but for Trump's public statements.

The attorney general was careful to say nothing more about the investigation than what the public already knew. The warrant and attached materials, should the court allow their release, will do the speaking for him.

Trump is now caught between a rock and a hard place. He is not likely to want the "inventory" of items that the FBI seized on Monday revealed or he would have done it himself; after all, the agents left a copy with his lawyer at Mar-a-Lago. On the other hand, opposing the motion to unseal the warrant and the inventory would add mightily to suspicion that he had indeed improperly kept state secrets and would prefer to keep that hidden.

He has until 3 p.m. on Friday to decide what stance to take in court.

In the meantime, the twice-impeached ex-president has chosen the safe and familiar course: distraction On his Social Truth media site, he posted: "Does anybody really believe that Joe Biden and the White House knew NOTHING about this great embarrassment to our Country?"

Perhaps the only surprise in all this was his failure to include another familiar meme: "But her emails!"

https://www.rawstory.com/how-merrick-garland-turned-the-tables-on-trump-and-made-trump-s-supporters-look-like-fools/

[Rick Plant]

Some Trump advisors 'trying to go dark' as Mar-a-Lago scandal continues to escalate: reporter



Speaking on MSNBC this Friday, The Washington Post's Josh Dawsey discussed the reaction to the news stories emanating from the FBI's search of Donald Trump's Palm Beach resort, saying that many people close to the former president are staying quiet as new details surface.

Dawsey says when news of the raid first broke, "there was shock in former President Trump's orbit."

"As people around him have learned more details about the extent of what he was keeping there, and the various efforts behind the scenes to get them short of a search warrant, alarm has grown in recent days when you talk to advisors of the former president," Dawsey said.

"Some of them are starting to go dark and to stay as far away from this as they can," he continued. "Others, I think, know that this is a bad idea, and there are some folks close to him who say he's been through so many different investigations, so many different challenges, so many different times where everyone said the walls were closing in, and this is going to be another time where he makes a Houdini-like escape."

The FBI raid on Donald trump's Florida residence was partly based on suspicions of violations of the US Espionage Act related to the illegal retention of sensitive defense documents, a warrant showed Friday.

The warrant and related materials, unsealed by a Florida judge, showed agents took away with them a significant number of documents labelled "top secret."

Since leaving office, Trump has remained the country's most divisive figure and a force in the Republican party, continuing to sow falsehoods that he actually won the 2020 vote.

On Wednesday, the 76-year-old Trump was questioned for four hours by Letitia James, the New York state attorney general who is investigating the business practices of the Trump Organization.

Trump is also facing legal scrutiny for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and over the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.

Trump was impeached for a historic second time by the House after the Capitol riot -- he was charged with inciting an insurrection -- but was acquitted by the Senate.

Watch video in link below:

https://www.rawstory.com/some-trump-advisors-trying-to-go-dark-as-mar-a-lago-scandal-continues-to-escalate-reporter/

[Rick Plant]

LOCK this criminal UP!

Criminal Donald is now under criminal investigation for the worst crime against the United States of America which is espionage. And his deranged sycophants still try to cover and protect this scumbag traitor.   

Criminal Donald is under criminal investigation for potential violations of Espionage Act.

Trump under investigation for potential violations of Espionage Act, warrant reveals

Details contained in explosive search warrant show US officials investigating whether three criminal statutes violated


Donald Trump in New York this week, days after the FBI searched his home in south Florida. Photograph: David Dee Delgado/Reuters

Donald Trump is under criminal investigation for potential violations of the Espionage Act and additional statutes relating to obstruction of justice and destroying federal government records, according to the search warrant executed by FBI agents at the former president’s home on Monday.

The search warrant – the contents of which were confirmed by the Guardian – shows the FBI was seeking evidence about whether the mishandling of classified documents by Trump, including some marked top secret, amounted to a violation of three criminal statutes.

Most notably, the search warrant authorized FBI agents to seize materials to investigate potential crimes in connection with the Espionage Act, which outlaws the unauthorized retention of national security information that could harm the United States or aid a strategic adversary.

The other statutes listed on the warrant include the federal law that makes it a crime to destroy or conceal a document in order to obstruct a government investigation, and the federal law that prohibits the unlawful removal of government documents more generally.

The disclosures, which came in an attachment to the search warrant, mark a dramatic escalation in the justice department’s criminal inquiries into Trump. They represent perhaps the most treacherous legal and political moment faced to date by the former president.

A conviction for violating any of the detailed laws would be severe: the Espionage Act has a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison and the statute for obstruction has a maximum penalty of 20 years, while the statute for destruction of records can also bar holding future office.

FBI agents removed classified documents marked as top secret when they searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence on Monday, according to a description of the search warrant receipt that lists the materials seized by federal agents.

The most sensitive set of documents removed from Trump’s post-presidency home in Florida were listed generically as “Various Classified/TS/SCI” – the abbreviation that stands for top secret/sensitive compartmented information – the source said, among other records.

FBI agents retrieved a total of 11 sets of classified documents, some of which were marked top secret, the Wall Street Journal first reported. Federal agents also took away four sets of top secret documents, three sets of secret documents, and three sets of confidential documents, the Journal reported.

The search warrant receipt did not provide any further detail about the substance of the classified documents, the newspaper reported, but said the FBI additionally collected binders of photos, materials on the “president of France”, and a grant of clemency for Trump operative Roger Stone.

FBI agents searched Mar-a-Lago on Monday bearing a warrant – approved by Merrick Garland, the attorney general – that authorized a search of “the 45 Office”, as well as “all storage rooms and all other rooms or areas … in which boxes or documents could be stored”, the Journal also reported.

The disclosure of the contents of the search warrant and the receipt came hours before the deadline for Trump and his legal team, led by Evan Corcoran, to oppose a motion by the justice department to make public both documents, which remain under seal.

Trump said in a statement late on Thursday on his social media website that he would not oppose the release of the two documents. “Not only will I not oppose the release of the documents … I am going a step further by ENCOURAGING the immediate release of those documents,” he posted.


The notice filed by the justice department to a federal court informing the judge that lawyers for Trump did not object to the government’s motion to unseal the search warrant. Photograph: Jon Elswick/AP

The motion to unseal, announced by Garland in prepared remarks at the justice department’s headquarters on Thursday, does not currently include the affidavit accompanying the warrant.

Corcoran is understood to be in possession of both the search warrant and the receipt, while at least one more lawyer representing Trump has reviewed the contents of the receipt, say sources close to the former president. Trump has not authorized them to release the documents, the sources said.

House intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff released a statement regarding the revelations about classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago.

“If reports are accurate and contained among these documents are some of the most highly classified information our government holds – information classified as top secret/secure compartmented information – then it would explain a great deal about why the department and the FBI took the step of obtaining a warrant to recover the documents,” Schiff said.

"It appears that the FBI sought to remove those documents to a safe location previously, but Trump did not fully cooperate. Every day that information of such a classification sits in an unsecure location is a risk to our national security. If any other individual had information of that nature in their possession, the FBI would work quickly to mitigate the risks of disclosure.”

The committee the California Democrat chairs oversees the FBI as well as other federal law enforcement agencies.

Schiff noted he had confidence in the justice department, while adding: “The protection of classified information, and particularly the protection of sources and methods, is an issue of the highest priority for the intelligence committee, and as we learn more, we will responsibly discharge our oversight responsibilities.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/12/fbi-agents-trump-search-mar-a-lago-documents

[Rick Plant]

'The more we know, the worse it gets': Legal experts react to release of Mar-a-Lago search warrant



Details in the Mar-a-Lago search warrant make Donald Trump look even worse than he did yesterday when it was reported the FBI sought nuclear weapons documents and had recovered signals intelligence from the Florida resort, according to a former White House ethics czar.

Breitbart White House correspondent Charlie Spiering reported, "3 criminal statutes for the warrant: 18 U.S.C. sec 793, which deals with defense information; 18 U.S.C. sec 1519, which deals with destroying federal documents; and 18 U.S.C. sec 2071, which deals with concealing, removing, or damaging federal documents."

On CNN, former Obama White House ethics czar Norm Eisen told anchor Victor Blackwell that some of the documents never should have ever been at Mar-a-Lago.

"These documents are supposed to be stored in what we call a SCIF," Eisen said. "When I was ambassador, my office was a SCIF, a 'Secure, Compartmentalized Information Facility' where you're not allowed to bring in your cell phones. There's a variety of rules on who can enter and how they can enter, and then within the SCIF, you'll often have a safe for the most sensitive documents and we know these documents were not secured that way, because one of the things the government said to Mr. Trump and his team was 'you have to put a lock on that room' and we know the government is interested in these issues, Victor, because they've also subpoenaed the surveillance tape of who was coming and going."

"The more we learn, the worse it gets, the danger to our national security, based on what we're hearing concerning these documents," Eisen concluded.



Attorney Tristan Snell, who shut down Trump University when he worked for the U.S. Attorney General's Office, wondered if the investigation could bleed over into the probes of Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

"If DOJ is investigating Trump for destroying, altering, or falsifying records in federal investigations, it means the Mar-a-Lago materials may include documents relevant to other investigations -- such as January 6," Snell wrote on Twitter.

Law professor Steve Vladeck said, "Two sections of the Espionage Act (§ 793(d) & (f)) apply even to those *lawfully* in possession of national security information — and prohibit certain conduct even by those who were entitled to have the underlying material in the first place."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

BREAKING: While Trump says he declassified the documents seized by the FBI, two laws referenced in the search warrant (Sections 1519 and 2071 of Title 18 of the US Code) make concealing documents a crime EVEN IF they were unclassified.

Criminal Donald is going to prison!

[Rick Plant]

'That stuff doesn't lie around': How Trump would have to go out of his way to steal top secret documents



On Friday's edition of MSNBC's "The Beat," Washington Post editor Eugene Robinson laid out exactly how serious former President Donald Trump's alleged removal of classified information was.

This comes amid reporting that nuclear weapons secrets may have been among the documents the FBI was searching for when they executed a warrant at the former president's Mar-a-Lago country club in Palm Beach, Florida.

"Just as they compartmentalize some of this intelligence, Gene, if we compartmentalize away everything that people feel about Donald Trump — good, bad, or in between — and take just this information. Imagine it was President X," said anchor Ari Melber. "How does this fit into your view of the significance of this story, as someone we rely on to understand this national news?"

"Unprecedented, unthought of," said Robinson. "Every president I've ever known or watched or observed in or reported on, every administration has been very extremely meticulously careful with Top Secret information, with classified information."

The key point, Robinson stressed, is that at least with regard to documents marked as Top Secret or SCI, there is no way this is something Trump could have done accidentally, or casually.

"Now administrations, governments generally speaking, classify too many things," said Robinson. "There is a lot of stuff they stamp confidential or whatever on that doesn't deserve to be. But when you get to Top Secret, you get to Top Secret/SCI, that most sensitive information, that stuff doesn't lie around in the White House. It doesn't lie around in the Oval Office. It doesn't lie around anywhere, much less in the basement of Mar-a-Lago. It just doesn't. It's handled very carefully, and it's looked at and examined and talked about, and then it's tucked away into secure carriers and taken back to whatever vault it's kept in. It just doesn't happen. And this is another way in which, again, everything else aside, the Donald Trump administration was like literally no other administration in the history of this country, because no other administration would have and certainly no other administration did treat classified information like this."

Watch: