FBI raids Trump’s Mar-a-Lago

[Rick Plant]

A week ago, a federal judge issued a bizarre, incoherent, unenforceable, and brazenly corrupt ruling in favor of Donald Trump’s request for a special master. This week the DOJ fired back with a motion that cleverly reframed the probe in such a manner that made it almost impossible for the judge to stick to her guns.

Now the judge is asking both sides to weigh in on a partial stay of her own ruling, which would allow the DOJ to move forward in the way that it needs to, without having to take the time to appeal her ruling to a higher court and get it struck down.

One legal expert appeared on MSNBC and characterized the judge’s move as a “white flag” of surrender, as the judge tries to get out from under her own bizarre ruling. Another legal expert on the same panel pointed out that if Trump wants to contest this partial stay, he’ll have to claim in court that he had a standing order to declassify all documents – something that could come back to bite him later:

Now the judge is asking both sides to weigh in on a partial stay of her own ruling, which would allow the DOJ to move forward in the way that it needs to, without having to take the time to appeal her ruling to a higher court and get it struck down.

One legal expert appeared on MSNBC and characterized the judge’s move as a “white flag” of surrender, as the judge tries to get out from under her own bizarre ruling. Another legal expert on the same panel pointed out that if Trump wants to contest this partial stay, he’ll have to claim in court that he had a standing order to declassify all documents – something that could come back to bite him later:

Watch: https://twitter.com/i/status/1568253165426085888

[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