FBI raids Trump’s Mar-a-Lago

[Rick Plant]

Trump lawyer may be stripped of 'attorney-client privilege' over Mar-a-Lago obstruction: legal expert



Buried in a profile of Donald Trump attorney Christina Bobb, one legal expert suggested she and the former president may find that the legal protections afforded by the attorney-client privilege may be stripped away from them due to accusations she may have assisted in obstructing the DOJ.

Detailing Bobb's quick rise from OAN host to currently being part of a team of lawyers defending the former president's attempt to hoard highly sensitive government documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Business Insider's Sophia Ankel wrote that Bobb's signing of documents that all materials had been handed back to the government when they had not, has put her in the DOJ's crosshairs.

According to the report, "In a legal filing last month, the DOJ alleged that Bobb and Evan Corcoran, another Trump lawyer, misled prosecutors by saying they had handed over all classified documents from Mar-a-Lago."

Adding that "Experts said the filing could build a legal case that Bobb and Corcoran obstructed the government's investigation, and urged both lawyers to get lawyers of their own," Ankel spoke with attorney and national security expert Bradley Moss who claimed she has major legal problems in her future.

"Bobb certainly, at a minimum, is a material-fact witness in the context of the government's inquiry into possible obstruction and efforts to conceal the records located at Mar-a-Lago," he explained.

"It is not out of the realm of possibility that the government ... will at least seek a court order compelling her to testify before the grand jury, citing the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege.," he elaborated.

As for Bobb's continuing appearances on Fox News defending Trump on his Mar-a-Lago document problems, Moss added, "She should stay off of TV at this point, as [she] is only making the situation worse."

Read More Here: https://www.businessinsider.com/christina-bobb-profile-trump-lawyer-former-oan-presenter-2022-9

[Rick Plant]

The DOJ left a 'tantalizing' warning in their Trump-appointed judge appeal: former FBI official



According to the former assistant director for counterintelligence at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, when the Department of Justice appealed Judge Ailleen Cannon's decision on appointing a special master, they left a clue that there are more issues to be resolved.

Speaking with host Alex Witt, former agent Frank Figliuzzi called the legal notation "tantalizing."

Prompting Figliuzzi about the empty files that have DOJ officials concerned, Witt asked, "The DOJ filing says that the FBI is responsible for finding out if they are lost or compromised. Frank, how significant is that?"

'Yeah I mean, just as important as what they found is what they didn't find and the question is of where is it," he replied. "Because as you said, they've got 40-some odd empty folders marked classified and you've got to figure out whether that simply means that the documents were taken out of those folders and intermingled amongst personal belongings and other records, or whether they were truly, truly missing."

"And, again, that is linked to the risk review and the criminal case and even -- very kind of tantalizing -- the DOJ says in their, filing 'look, judge, your ruling is actually stopping us, impeding us is the word they used, from finding documents, other classified documents. which could be out there, even in other places.'"

"So this raises the possibility that they suspect those empty folders, those contents, might have ended up somewhere else," he elaborated. "And the question of somewhere else is why they need to get the investigation back up and running."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Warner wants damage assessment from intel community over Trump documents

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says the intelligence community needs to provide a damage assessment of the classified material found at former President Donald Trump's home in Florida.

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Criminal Donald is now a private citizen who stole top secret classified information and stashed them at his residence in Florida. The DOJ has every right to look at the documents he stole.         

Trump attorneys object to DOJ's request to continue reviewing classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago
https://news.yahoo.com/trump-attorneys-object-to-do-js-request-to-continue-reviewing-classified-documents-seized-from-mar-a-lago-164207927.html

[Rick Plant]

Feds claim there are no documents on record that apply to a so-called Trump 'declassification order'

Former President Donald Trump and his allies have claimed multiple times that there was a kind of "declassification order" on many of the documents that he took from the White House back to his country club in Florida.

In an interview with the Fox network, Trump said that while he was in office he "often took documents, including classified documents, to the residence" and "had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken to the residence were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them."

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton said that while he was there there was nothing of the sort going on, and that the idea of a standing declassification order is "almost certainly a lie."

ACLU lawyer Matthew Segal noted last week that colleagues sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the National Geospatial-intelligence agency requesting any documents pertaining to an "alleged declassification standing order, any written transmittal of the alleged declassification stand order from the executive office of the president of the United States to NGA, including by letter, memoranda, or email, all records created by NGA that were declassified pursuant to the alleged declassification standing order" up until Jan. 20, 2021.

The same request was also sent to the Department of Homeland Security. Both came back with the same answer.

On Sept. 8, Segal cited the letter from the NGA saying "Our extensive search of National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency records failed to identify any documents in our files that are responsive to your request."

Monday, the Department of Homeland Security returned the information explaining, "We conducted a comprehensive search of files within The Office of the Executive Secretary (ESEC) and the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) for records that would be responsive to your request. Unfortunately, we were unable to locate or identify and responsive records."

https://www.rawstory.com/did-trump-declassify-docs/

[Rick Plant]

​Judge unseals nine additional paragraphs from Mar-a-Lago search warrant affidavit



Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday unsealed more of the pages from the affidavit for the FBI search warrant issued for the classified documents Donald Trump took with him to his country club in Palm Beach, Florida.

There were two grand jury subpoenas issued prior to the search at Mar-a-Lago, the pages detail. They were part of the ongoing litigation around the special master. Federal prosecutors told Judge Cannon Tuesday that they've already talked about the special master in another case with the judge overseeing the grand jury and that that judge approved the disclosure of the information redacted previously

One piece that is new is the search warrant affidavit is that five of the documents were marked "confidential," 16 marked "secret," and 17 marked "top secret."

Other markings on the documents at Mar-a-Lago continued information derived from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is the kind of surveillance that happens electronically involving foreign adversaries to the U.S. as well as human intelligence.

There was a certified letter to the FBI and DOJ at Mar-a-Lago on June 3 saying that "based upon the information that has been provided to me, I am authorized to certify on behalf of the office of Donald Trump the following," it then makes the case that they'd searched all of the boxes in Florida from the White House and that they'd handed over all of the documents. The name isn't included in the new release, but reports indicated it was lawyer Christina Bobb.

Her letter also details that they did a search of the storage room and that there were no additional documents anywhere else in Mar-a-Lago, but the FBI alleges that it found many documents in Trump's personal office, his desk drawers and in the office closet.

According to "Individual 2," who is a National Archives representative for Trump said, “When producing the documents, neither FPOTUS COUNSEL 1 nor INDIVIDUAL 2 asserted that FPOTUS had declassified the documents. 2 The documents being in a Redweld envelope wrapped in tape appears to be consistent with an effort to handle the documents as if they were still classified.”

The newly unredacted portion of the Mar-a-Lago search warrant affidavit, the former president's "Counsel 1" pointed to Trump in what could be considered an obstruction of justice under 18 U.S.C. § 1519," tweeted lawyer George Conway.

You can read the full filing here: https://www.rawstory.com/trump-documents-additional-paragraphs/

[Rick Plant]

Unsealed Mar-a-Lago affidavit shows Donald Trump 'did play a role' in hiding documents: legal analyst

A federal magistrate judge responding to a U.S. Dept. of Justice request Tuesday afternoon further unsealed the affidavit used to obtain the search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago on August 8.

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, on MSNBC, says the additional information appears to confirm that Donald Trump likely played a role in instructing his attorney, who ultimately certified there were no classified documents remaining at Mar-a-Lago, before federal agents entered the Trump resort and retrieved more than 100 classified and top secret documents.

“This does in large part make the information that’s been revealed consistent between the D.C. and the Florida investigations,” Vance, a professor of law, told Nicolle Wallace.

Vance suggested that the newly revealed information appears to confirm that Trump was at least involved in the events that led his attorney to tell DOJ there were no more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

“If there’s one takeaway here and Nicole, and it’s not certain, but there’s more of an implication in this newly released information that the former president did play a role in the provision of information about documents to whoever the lawyer who certified this information to the Justice Department,” Vance surmised.

“There’s this implication that documents were stored in storage areas and that there was nothing in personal offices and that seems like the sort of information that would have been very likely to come from the former president,” she added.

“So this gives DOJ more of a basis to move forward. And of course, because this involves the grand jury, subpoenas are not documents that were ultimately seized in the search. DOJ is free to move forward with inquiries to witnesses without violating Judge Cannons order,” to not use the seized classified documents until after a special master has reviewed them.

Watch: https://twitter.com/i/status/1569794028916408323

[Rick Plant]

Mar-a-Lago documents: Trump delaying tactics causing ‘irreparable harm’ – DoJ

Justice department court filing argues that judge’s special master ruling impedes its review of highly classified documents


Pages from a Department of Justice court filing last month in response to a request from Donald Trump’s legal team for a special master to review seized documents.

Donald Trump’s lawyers are causing “irreparable harm” to the government and public by delaying the investigation into his hoarding of highly classified documents at his Florida mansion, the US Department of Justice said.

The claim came in a strongly worded court filing urging a district judge, Aileen Cannon, to reconsider her ruling last week granting Trump’s request for an independent “special master” in the case.

The Department of Justice argued that the order stops it continuing its review of thousands of documents, some reportedly containing details of a foreign power’s nuclear secrets, seized during an FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach last month.

Federal agents discovered the papers in a basement storage area and a desk drawer, despite assurances from Trump’s lawyers that all documents he took with him after leaving the White House in January 2021 had been returned to the National Archives.

“Markings [on the documents] signify that their unauthorized disclosure ‘reasonably could be expected to result in damage to the national security,’ including ‘exceptionally grave damage’,” Tuesday’s justice department filing said, adding that a delay would cause “irreparable harm”.

“Plaintiff has characterised the government’s criminal investigation as a ‘document storage dispute’ or an ‘overdue library book scenario.’ In doing so, plaintiff has not addressed the potential harms that could result from mishandling classified information or the strict requirements imposed by law for handling such materials.”

Cannon, a Trump appointee to the federal bench, has been widely criticized for the “special master” ruling, which some have argued placed Trump “above the law”. She has given no indication if or when she will reconsider the order.

Trump’s lawyers have urged Cannon to leave the order in place, claiming without evidence that the former president declassified the documents before he left office.

The justice department rejects that argument, insisting that even if Trump had taken such an action, which it notes has not been asserted in any of Trump’s legal filings or sworn declarations, the papers still belonged to the government and are not his personal property.

Also on Tuesday, another judge unsealed additional portions of an FBI affidavit laying out the basis for the search of Mar-a-Lago, showing that agents earlier obtained a hard drive after issuing a subpoena for surveillance footage recorded inside Mar-a-Lago.

A redacted version was released last month, but the justice department requested permission to show more of it after Trump’s lawyers revealed the existence of a June grand jury subpoena that sought video footage from cameras near the storage room.

According to the newly visible portions of the agent’s affidavit, the FBI subpoenaed the footage on 24 June, weeks after observing about 50 boxes of records in the storage room at Mar-a-Lago.

The Trump Organization provided a hard drive on 6 July in response to the subpoena, the affidavit says.

“Because those aspects of the grand jury’s investigation have now been publicly revealed, there is no longer any reason to keep them sealed (i.e. redacted) in the filings in this matter,” the justice department filing said.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/14/trump-documents-justice-department-irreparable-harm