Mar-a-Lago raided
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@Catseye3 said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
Speaking of how, in the end, peoples' fundaments govern how they vote, which you weren't but I am, I just redd this from Mike Manson, which probably answers that as well as anything:
"You see, our rational brains are absolutely terrible when our emotional brains are firing on all cylinders. From an evolutionary standpoint, the emotional brain is too old and too important for our survival that our rational brains sometimes can’t even get their shoes on before our emotions have burned the damn house down."
Well circa 100% of the political messaging we’re exposed to is designed to maximize our emotional response. So I guess this figures. The anti Trump messaging is entirely about maximizing the fear and disgust reactions. This works well.
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From Yahoo: https://news.yahoo.com/understanding-the-fb-is-raid-on-trumps-mar-a-lago-home-003031665.html
"Tracy Walder, a former FBI special agent and CIA operative, laughed when asked whether obtaining a search warrant in an investigation into an ordinary American was as simple as just dialing up a judge to railroad a personal enemy.
"Walder noted that the search warrant for Mar-a-Lago was executed by the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section of the Department of Justice. “I was on that squad at the FBI,” Walder said. “I will never forget when I had to go and get a search warrant. My supervisor told me, ‘If you don't get it, don’t bother coming back to the office. Turn in your badge, you're done.’ You need an overabundance of information to obtain one to a point that — I'll be frank — is annoying. I could have a guy on the phone admitting to a crime, and that wouldn’t necessarily be sufficient.”
"In Trump’s case, Walder said, the very fact that the FBI felt compelled to seek out a warrant underscores the gravity of what it has determined so far. Unlike wiretaps or surreptitious entries, search warrants become public information, especially when they target public figures; the inevitable fallout from targeting a public figure of this magnitude will have been considered extremely carefully at all levels of law enforcement involved."
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@Catseye3 said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
From Yahoo: https://news.yahoo.com/understanding-the-fb-is-raid-on-trumps-mar-a-lago-home-003031665.html
"Tracy Walder, a former FBI special agent and CIA operative, laughed when asked whether obtaining a search warrant in an investigation into an ordinary American was as simple as just dialing up a judge to railroad a personal enemy.
"Walder noted that the search warrant for Mar-a-Lago was executed by the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section of the Department of Justice. “I was on that squad at the FBI,” Walder said. “I will never forget when I had to go and get a search warrant. My supervisor told me, ‘If you don't get it, don’t bother coming back to the office. Turn in your badge, you're done.’ You need an overabundance of information to obtain one to a point that — I'll be frank — is annoying. I could have a guy on the phone admitting to a crime, and that wouldn’t necessarily be sufficient.”
"In Trump’s case, Walder said, the very fact that the FBI felt compelled to seek out a warrant underscores the gravity of what it has determined so far. Unlike wiretaps or surreptitious entries, search warrants become public information, especially when they target public figures; the inevitable fallout from targeting a public figure of this magnitude will have been considered extremely carefully at all levels of law enforcement involved."
Another person who will be super embarrassed if this turns out to be an overdue library book from the national archives.
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A bit more from the Yahoo article, some truncated:
"On June 3, [Trump's] attorneys allowed the investigators access to a basement room where the presidential documents were being kept. Some had Top Secret markings, according to one source interviewed by CNN.
"Five days later, at the request of the investigators, Trump’s aides installed a padlock to the door of the storage room.
“They probably saw stuff that Trump should absolutely not be in possession of,” Strzok said.
And anent George's Dersh postings, he said:
“Subpoenaing it won’t work, because of the chain of custody. And Trump isn’t acting in good faith to just hand the stuff over. The only other option left is to get a warrant.”
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An Informer Told the FBI What Docs Trump Was Hiding
The raid on Mar-a-Lago was based largely on information from an FBI confidential human source, one who was able to identify what classified documents former President Trump was still hiding and even the location of those documents, two senior government officials told Newsweek.
The officials, who have direct knowledge of the FBI's deliberations and were granted anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters, said the raid of Donald Trump's Florida residence was deliberately timed to occur when the former president was away.
FBI decision-makers in Washington and Miami thought that denying the former president a photo opportunity or a platform from which to grandstand (or to attempt to thwart the raid) would lower the profile of the event, says one of the sources, a senior Justice Department official who is a 30-year veteran of the FBI.
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The effort to keep the raid low-key failed: instead, it prompted a furious response from GOP leaders and Trump supporters. "What a spectacular backfire," says the Justice official."I know that there is much speculation out there that this is political persecution, but it is really the best and the worst of the bureaucracy in action," the official says. "They wanted to punctuate the fact that this was a routine law enforcement action, stripped of any political overtones, and yet [they] got exactly the opposite."
Both senior government officials say the raid was scheduled with no political motive, the FBI solely intent on recovering highly classified documents that were illegally removed from the White House. Preparations to conduct such an operation began weeks ago, but in planning the date and time, the FBI Miami Field Office and Washington headquarters were focused on the former president's scheduled return to Florida from his residences in New York and New Jersey.
"They were seeking to avoid any media circus," says the second source, a senior intelligence official who was briefed on the investigation and the operation. "So even though everything made sense bureaucratically and the FBI feared that the documents might be destroyed, they also created the very firestorm they sought to avoid, in ignoring the fallout."
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@Catseye3 said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
A bit more from the Yahoo article, some truncated:
"On June 3, [Trump's] attorneys allowed the investigators access to a basement room where the presidential documents were being kept. Some had Top Secret markings, according to one source interviewed by CNN.
"Five days later, at the request of the investigators, Trump’s aides installed a padlock to the door of the storage room.
“They probably saw stuff that Trump should absolutely not be in possession of,” Strzok said.
And anent George's Dersh postings, he said:
“Subpoenaing it won’t work, because of the chain of custody. And Trump isn’t acting in good faith to just hand the stuff over. The only other option left is to get a warrant.”
So, the Feds had to cut their requested padlock off?
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@Horace said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
Looking more and more like this will be a nothing burger in terms of severity of the offense. Which would play into a Trump 2024 campaign. Sigh.
Perhaps not in terms of severity of offense, given the law Trump signed into effect in 2018. But if this is just “Trump has documents” he’ll win the politics of it.
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@Horace said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
Is it conceivable that Trump baited the FBI into raiding him by intentionally holding back some classified documents that nobody really cares about, in order to support his swamp victim narrative and a 2024 run?
4-D Chinese Checkers…
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@Horace said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
Is it conceivable that Trump baited the FBI into raiding him by intentionally holding back some classified documents that nobody really cares about, in order to support his swamp victim narrative and a 2024 run?
That would be as genius a move as Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
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The political stupidity of the FBI radiates like a green glow. A nauseating green glow.
I've read today where they did not want to raid Trump's house when he was there because of the optics and coordinated that with the Miami office.
But what nitwit authorized a nighttime raid with 30 fucking FBI agents? The optics make the old Stazi look like they were half-assed doing things.
Jesus, people! Go up to the front door in the light of day, knock like normal law enforcement does and show your warrant. Then, have four or five guys get out of the van and do what you came to do.
Next big raid, I guess they'll have to parachute in or maybe just use a helicopter gunship.
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