Mar-a-Lago raided
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@Catseye3 said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
@Mik said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
No, you are wrong here. I'm not defending Trump in any way. I'm completely willing to withhold any judgement as to the correctness of the warrant until we see what specifically it was about.
I'm very happy -- and unsurprised -- to hear that.
My criticism is that the public has been kept in the dark and that he and his supporters could very predictably be counted on to gin up outrage and probably mistaken assumptions that improve his chances in 2024. It may in fact have been deliberate on his part to launch his campaign. All that could have been avoided by simply stating what they were after and why from the start.
I can't answer this, because I don't know to what extent NARA (or whoever) did or didn't keep the public apprised. If it was all surreptitious, then boo hiss on them for playing into Trump's hands.
Educate yourself.
At its base, this becomes a common Executive documents/National archive story. It happened with Obama, which is maybe why Trump tightened the law. Also happened with Clinton and with Bush.
Where this story deviates, hinges on two unassailable facts:
- The Trump hate that exists within a certain echelon of the Justice and certainly exits in the Whitehouse. And the hate Trump has for them. At least I know Trump has good reason.
This propelled the raid.
- The fact that this was a raid, no matter how the Left tries to spin it. So what, if a former POTUS is fighting a subpoena for records? The President has the right to declassify his documents and the fight may be whether the documents have been declassified.
Here this goes off the rails, is a nighttime raid by 30 agents, planned for when Trump was not at home. This could have easily been done by four agents in a van, during normal business hours. No need for the theater, except to send the message...The same message they sent at Stone's home, when they showed up with a SWAT team and a CNN news crew to arrest an elderly man who was not a flight risk.
As Will wrote - and he has a nice amount of Trump hate flowing through his veins - this simply is not done, if you wish to have a functioning society. These are the tactics of a banana republic and anybody who doesn't think the other side will retaliate in kind is a moron.
The gentleman who will most likely be the next Speaker, has already told Garland to keep all of his notes and communications and clear his calendar. I wouldn't be surprised if they impeach him (although that may be over the Border).
Y'all may enjoy the nightly histrionics on PMSNBC or CNN, but this ain't no way to run a country.
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Link to PDF copy of the unsealed search warrant and property receipt:
https://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=22131380-trump-warrant-unsealed?responsive=1&ti
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@Jolly said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
Fishing expedition.
They already knew the boxes were there. They had already asked for a padlock to be installed on the storeroom door.
Trumps people are claiming that the FBI seized privileged attorney-client documents. If there were such a claim, DOJ should appoint a "special master" to determine what's privileged and what is not.
FBI - "Nope, not gonna happen."
The FBI seized boxes containing records covered by attorney-client privilege and potentially executive privilege during its raid of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, sources familiar with the investigation told Fox News, adding that the Justice Department opposed Trump lawyers' request for the appointment of an independent, special master to review the records.
Sources familiar with the investigation told Fox News Saturday that the former president’s team was informed that boxes labeled A-14, A-26, A-43, A-13, A-33, and a set of documents—all seen on the final page of the FBI’s property receipt —contained information covered by attorney-client privilege.
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Is he fishing? There are documents out of federal custody that shouldn't be. The feds want them back.
If these are documents that do not belong to Trump once he has left office, then how would attorney-client privilege even apply?
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@Catseye3 said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
Is he fishing? There are documents out of federal custody that shouldn't be. The feds want them back.
Yeah, IF they belong in federal custody. That's the allegation by the DOJ.
At least he didn't smash them with a hammer. Only flushed them down a toilet (low-tech guy, you know).
If these are documents that do not belong to Trump once he has left office, then how would attorney-client privilege even apply?
Trump is claiming that OTHER documents, which belong under attorney-client privilege were seized. I don't know if that's true, of course, because Trump, but his demand for a special master is reasonable.
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@jon-nyc said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
Let’s wait.
You know I'm no Trump fan. Simply looking at what the rights of the accused are, and wondering if he has a case here.
Do I put it beyond him to have (c )lassified materials in his possession? Absolutely not.
Was it "poor judgment" or actually an attempt to commit a crime?
No idea.Six, two, and even the crime-fraud exception applies here.
I'm into my first (cheap) Scotch of the day...please explain?
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I don't think there has been a single President in the last century that probably didn't have some Secret and TS documents wander home with him.
It's not that uncommon for Congress Critters to have such a document in their possession.
Apply the law fairly and evenly.
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@George-K said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
Simply looking at what the rights of the accused are
As much as it sickens me to say so, I agree his rights must be safeguarded. But his rights as important as they are, are not as vital as the main thing: namely, those documents. They cannot be left out of federal custody, especially when their contents are not known.
Knowing Trump, they could be anything. It would not be surprising if they turned out to be of no importance. Boy, what fodder that would be for Trump, eh?
Why in hell did he even take them with him, anyway? Could it be for the purpose of embarrassing the feds and feeding his base's frenzy? At no cost to him?
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@Mik said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
It all has to be jealously guarded. if he gets prosecuted there will be a whole lot of 'splainin to do as to why Hillary was not.
She cooperated and turned over the servers and didn’t lie about retaining anything.
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@Copper said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
@George-K said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
Six, two, and even the crime-fraud exception applies here.
I'm into my first (cheap) Scotch of the day...please explain?
Go to 1:30.
Link to video -
@jon-nyc , I am ashamed to admit it, I've never seen that movie.
Another not Trump fan, David French says, be consistent.
Trump lacks any real excuse for his behavior for retaining classified information, but Clinton had no excuse either. Remember, she used a private server to discuss matters that were classified at the highest levels, and she was seasoned enough to know exactly what she was doing.
Trump’s defense is as weak as Hillary’s. His team is reportedly claiming that he had a “standing order” to declassify all documents that he took to Mar-a-Lago, but as Philip Klein notes in National Review, this argument is “patently absurd”:
The bottom line is deeply disheartening. Two of the most powerful and prominent politicians in the United States engaged in conduct that virtually any other American would be prosecuted for. They have placed the system under great strain, and the system is buckling.
It remains to be seen whether Donald Trump’s conduct was so much worse than Hillary Clinton’s that prosecution is both legal and just. Indeed the entire issue may be so fraught with peril that the DOJ may decide to merely seize the documents without any further legal proceedings.
But if Trump did break the law and is not prosecuted, we can look back at a pivotal moment in history and know why. On July 5, 2016, the FBI set an extraordinary standard for prosecuting powerful people for mishandling our nation’s most precious secrets, and we shouldn’t change that standard for Donald Trump.