Mar-a-Lago raided
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Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
@Mik
Mik, thanks for explaining. I'm still trying to sort everything out.So Judge Reinhart, who signed the original search warrant, is now directing DOJ to respond to motions filed by Judicial Watch et al. to unseal the search warrant. Am I correct that the DOJ must comply with the order to respond, but retained the option to not unseal the warrant?
The judge's order says, ""The response may be filed ex parte and under seal as necessary to avoid disclosing matters already under seal."
So who sealed the warrant in the first place? The FBI? Then why can't DOJ just unseal it?
DOJ cites "the intense public interest presented by a search of a residence of a former President,” as its reason for moving to unseal, when DOJ was actually responding to a court order to do so? So Garland lied about that?
Then: "CNN's legal analyst Elie Honig described the announcement as a "remarkable and unusual move" because "we essentially saw Merrick Garland call Donald Trump's bluff."
This meant what? That Trump made a big noise anticipating that DOJ would react by refusing to unseal the warrant, therefore inciting his people to accusations of railroading poor beleaguered Trump unfairly? Which Garland queered his pitch by acquiescing to the unsealing?
But didn't Trump's supporters want DOJ to unseal the warrant? The entities which are seeking to unseal are conservatives, yes?
So if the reveal is a nothingburger, why has Trump not turned them over? And if it is something substantive then Trump gambled and lost?
If I've got all this right, I'm still confused.
Success is measured by your discipline and inner peace. – Mike Ditka
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@Catseye3 , think back to Trump’s never ending delay to release his tax returns. Trump made multiple promises to release his tax returns, yet kept citing bogus rationale about not being able to release his tax returns as long as he is being audited by the IRS. Trump may try to replay the same trick with the search warrant now, having copies of the search warrant and the itemized list of what has been taken, having the power to release it himself, making noise about releasing it, but never do.
It’s good that the DOJ is moving to release the search warrant and the itemized list of items taken. Let the sunshine in and let everything air out in the open.
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@Jolly said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
Meanwhile back at the FBI Building, Hunter's laptop has been on the property almost two years.
TWO YEARS.
Let that sink in.
Well...Maybe there is a reason...
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Full transcript of AG Garland’s statement:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/11/us/politics/garland-fbi-trump-transcript.html
Excerpt:
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Just now the Justice Department has filed a motion in the southern district of Florida to unseal a search warrant and property receipt relating to a court-approved search that the F.B.I. conducted earlier this week.That search was a premises located in Florida belonging to the former president. The department did not make any public statements on the day of the search. The former president publicly confirmed the search that evening, as is his right. Copies of both the warrant and the F.B.I. property receipt were provided on the day of the search to the former president’s counsel, who was on site during the search.
The search warrant was authorized by a federal court upon the required finding of probable cause. The property receipt is a document that federal law requires law enforcement agents to leave with the property owner. The department filed the motion to make public the warrant and receipt in light of the former president’s public confirmation of the search, the surrounding circumstances, and the substantial public interest in this matter.
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@Axtremus said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
Full transcript of AG Garland’s statement:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/11/us/politics/garland-fbi-trump-transcript.html
Excerpt:
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Just now the Justice Department has filed a motion in the southern district of Florida to unseal a search warrant and property receipt relating to a court-approved search that the F.B.I. conducted earlier this week.That search was a premises located in Florida belonging to the former president. The department did not make any public statements on the day of the search. The former president publicly confirmed the search that evening, as is his right. Copies of both the warrant and the F.B.I. property receipt were provided on the day of the search to the former president’s counsel, who was on site during the search.
The search warrant was authorized by a federal court upon the required finding of probable cause. The property receipt is a document that federal law requires law enforcement agents to leave with the property owner. The department filed the motion to make public the warrant and receipt in light of the former president’s public confirmation of the search, the surrounding circumstances, and the substantial public interest in this matter.
…And it took him being thirty minutes late to massage this before reading it?
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"My pronouns are FA/FO." - Mik, 2024
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@Mik said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
Yeah, I wondered about that too. he didn't really say anything the average bear would not be able to deduce.
It's not that he said nothing. That, I expected. Washington-crafted, pure Grade-A Nothingspeak. Most likely written last night and voted on by at least three people until signed off on by the AG.
And he was still thirty minutes late, shoveling the bullshit. Makes me wonder...
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After the total crap America has taken on law enforcement within the culture wars, this must be the first firm public stance taken by anybody in a position of national power, in defense of the character of the men and women employed therein. All it took was a questionable enforcement action against Trump, and voila, law enforcement is of unimpeachable character.
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I commend the response. “Speak through your work”. They filed a motion to unseal the warrant, so people can read it and judge for their own. So much better than the Comey-style impromptu presser. And (given the circumstances) better than staying mum as per policy.
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That was Comey’s logic. The department has learned from that.
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@Mik said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
Nah. They had to know what kind of kerfuffle this would precipitate.
So all that business about, the service was done quietly and it was Trump who raised the racket, was a lie? Because if it was the truth, then how do you figure they "had to know"?
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"My pronouns are FA/FO." - Mik, 2024
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@Mik said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
Because it was unprecedented and because so many have tried to get him so many ways.
But your answer would have been the same if it hadn't been unprecedented!
Sorry, I've redd all the posts on this, and it's like y'all are bound and determined to believe what you need to believe, even if you have to corkscrew yourselves to do it. As if two seconds after news of the service emerged, the latest-maneuver-to-get-Trump diatribes were solidly in place.
I don't have a problem seeing it far more simply. NARA had reason to believe Trump had removed and retained documents he shouldn't have when he left office. They attempted to get them back without success, and being worried about the nature of the documents' contents, appealed to DOJ, who says "Where possible it is standard practice to seek less intrusive means as an alternative to a search," and when those means weren't successful they were left with no choice but the warrant.
IOW, it was Trump who initiated this whole thing by removing documents he shouldn't have. The feds petitioned him to return them without success, and were left with no choice but the search warrant, because they could not afford to leave documents of unknown content floating around unsecured. It seems like the feds gave him a lot of latitude in this, and he has persisted in not cooperating.
I admit I'm not confident in my understanding of this whole thing, but I just can't make it make sense that the warrant is an effort to "get" him. I don't see that Trump left them any choice.
I'm not beating a drum to champion any one line of reasoning. I'm just trying to understand what's going on.
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George (not a Trump fan) Will: Garland has a political duty to explain the circus
As this is written Thursday, there are important unanswered questions about who instigated the search of Mar-a-Lago, and why. One remarkable aspect of this debacle, however, is that vigorous disgust need not wait until we know those answers: Try to imagine a justification for this flamboyant exercise of — what? law enforcement? What was important enough to bring to a rolling boil the already simmering suspicions of tens of millions of Americans about tentacles of the “deep state” engaging in partisan skulduggery?
This nation is running low on an indispensable ingredient of a successful society: trust, in institutions and one another. This week was another subtraction. Garland has said about the Justice Department, “We will and we must speak through our work.” Actually, his political duty is to explain and justify his work more thoroughly than he did in his minimalist statement Thursday afternoon.
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Kimberly Strassel is a bit less sanguine than Will.
Payback for Mar-a-Lago Will Be Brutal
In descending on Mar-a-Lago, the department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation shifted the U.S. into the category of countries whose ruling parties use government power to investigate political rivals. No attorney general has ever signed off on a raid on a former president’s home, in what could be the groundwork for criminal charges.
Yet to read the left’s media scribes, Monday’s search was a ho-hum day in crime-fighting. The Beltway press circled the wagons around Attorney General Merrick Garland and primly parroted Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s piety that “no one is above the law.” “The Mar-a-Lago Raid Proves the U.S. Isn’t a Banana Republic,” pronounced the Atlantic, clearly worried readers might conclude the opposite. It is “bedrock principle” that those who “commit crimes” “must answer for them,” it lectured.
If anything, a perceived political persecution of Mr. Trump could help him to a second term. And he would be even more unrestrained as the 47th president than he was as the 45th. A second Trump administration wouldn’t have the caliber of grown-ups who signed up for the first tour. Mr. Garland’s raid has made even the highest political figures fair prosecutorial game, and the media’s new standard is that the department can’t be questioned as it goes about ensuring “no one is above the law.” Let’s see how that holds when a future Republican Justice Department starts raiding the homes of Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, James Comey and John Brennan.
Payback could come even sooner. Democrats set a new low with their Ukrainian impeachment circus, and a GOP House next year might be up for a reprise. Get ready for a few more select committees—perhaps excluding the minority party, as the Democrats effectively did with the Jan. 6 committee—to investigate Mr. Garland’s politicized department or Hunter Biden’s finances. Watch them subpoena sitting Democratic representatives, as the Jan. 6 committee did to Republicans. Reps. Adam Schiff, Ilhan Omar and Eric Swalwell may find themselves on the back bench with a new Republican majority eager to follow Mrs. Pelosi’s example and strip the opposing team’s members of committee assignments.
All this tit for tat will further undermine our institutions and polarize the nation—but such is the nature of retributive politics. Which is why the wholesale Democratic and media defense of this week’s events is so reckless. Both parties long understood that political restraint was less about civility than self-preservation. What goes around always comes around. What went around this week will come around hard.
