Trump Raid updates

BPPLEE

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Interesting. Out of curiosity is it an android or iphone and are you using a browser or built in app?
It's a Samsung Galaxy using Google Chrome. When I try to search it makes suggestions and I am limited to the search suggestions.
 
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stevil

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I just googled "Trump confidential documents" and I got the following, these were all the first links in my search results
Trump search warrant: FBI took top secret files from Mar-a-Lago
Agents removed 11 sets of documents, including some marked "TS/SCI", a designation for material that could cause "exceptionally grave" damage to US national security.

The warrant indicates that FBI agents were looking into potential violations of the Espionage Act, which makes it illegal to keep or transmit potentially dangerous national security information.

The removal of classified documents or materials is prohibited by law. Mr Trump increased the penalties for the crime while in office and it is now punishable by up to five years in prison.

Trump records probe timeline
  • January 2022 - The National Archives retrieves 15 boxes of White House records from Mar-a-Lago, and says some of the documents it received at the end of Trump administration had been torn up
  • February - Reports emerge that classified files were found in the Mar-a-Lago cache and National Archives has asked DoJ to investigate
  • April - US media report the FBI has begun a preliminary investigation
  • 3 June - A senior DoJ official and three FBI agents travel to Mar-a-Lago to review items in a basement and Mr Trump drops by to say hello, according to reports
  • 8 June - Federal investigators reportedly write to a Trump aide to ask that a stronger lock be used to secure the room storing the items. Trump says that request was quickly fulfilled
  • 22 June - The Trump Organization reportedly receives a DoJ summons for CCTV footage from Mar-a-Lago
  • 8 August - Dozens of agents raid Mar-a-Lago, seizing more than 20 boxes, some containing top secret files, according to the search warrant

https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday...ed-kept-classified-material-is-unprecedented/
Presidential historian Michael Beschloss on Sunday said former President Trump’s handling of classified documents after he left office did not align with the actions taken by his predecessors.

“We have never in history seen a former president take ultra-classified documents, stick them in his basement, loosely watched by government standards, and with the shadow of we still don’t know what his motive was,” Beschloss said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Trump defended himself after the search by saying he declassified the documents and claiming the Biden administration weaponized the agency. He has also claimed without evidence that former President Obama kept 33 million pages of documents, with “much” of them being classified.

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has also debunked Trump’s claim, saying it maintains classified Obama records in a government facility in the Washington, D.C., area.

Nuclear or not, classified or not, Mar-a-Lago files spell out jeopardy for Trump
President says he declassified secret and sensitive documents – but that may not matter for him to be prosecuted

The unsealed search and seizure warrant shows that it was carried out, in part, under the Espionage Act, a set of statutes dating to 1917 that have been used aggressively to go after leakers, whistleblowers and the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange. The code quoted in the warrant carries a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment.

The inventory of material taken out of Mar-a-Lago leaves in no doubt the importance of the documents discovered there. They included top secret and “sensitive compartmented information” (SCI) meaning there were restrictions on its circulation over and above its top secret status. It should normally only be in a special facility, a SCIF. A SCIF was established at Mar-a-Lago, but it operated as a secure facility only during the Trump presidency.

It also looks significant that, in seeking a warrant, the FBI did not invoke code 1924, which is normally used in the case of government employees who hang on to documents they should not have. Instead the justice department used code 2071, relating to the “concealment, removal, or mutilation” of documentation, and code 1519, concerning the “destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations”.

“That suggests that the government has reason to believe that President Trump has done more than just hold on to these documents,” Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, said.

The Trump defence strategy appears to be twofold. One part is the catch-all claim that anything bad must have been planted by the FBI. That is an extraordinary scorched-earth path to take in the absence of any evidence

It may also be legally untenable as there appears to have been footage of the search that was available to Trump’s representatives on closed circuit television at the time. The Trump camp may not care about that, of course, as long as it muddies the waters.

The second strand of the Trump defence, quite contradictory to the first, is that while he was still in the White House, he declassified all the material in question by presidential fiat.

That would be unusual to say the least, and would not be how declassification is supposed to work.

“Whatever [the president’s] ‘powers’ might be to declassify docs, there are good policy and practical reasons for them to follow a process, and for that process to be documented and reflected on the document markings themselves,” Asha Rangappa, a former FBI special agent

“I still think an arrest and a prosecution are low probability,” Vladeck said. “From the government’s perspective, it seems like at least part of this exercise was about just removing things from President Trump’s possession, and that’s been accomplished, whereas arresting him and prosecuting him raise a whole different slew of political complications.”

FBI removed top secret documents from Trump's home, Justice Department says
The Justice Department told US Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart in its warrant application that it had probable cause to believe that Trump violated the Espionage Act, a federal law that prohibits the possession or transmission of national defense information.


Trump Lawyer Told Justice Dept. That Classified Material Had Been Returned
Paywall

Opinion | Espionage Isn’t the Strongest Case Against Trump. It’s Simpler Than That.
Former president Donald Trump’s stubborn refusal to return highly classified material forced the Justice Department’s hand, resulting in the execution of a search warrant at his residence. But while it is possible the DOJ merely wanted to retrieve and secure the material that Trump refused to give back to the government, if they decide to press forward with charges, their case looks quite strong.

The government initially treated Trump with kid gloves when he took government property, including classified documents, with him after he left office. The National Archives negotiated with Trump’s attorneys, securing 15 boxes of documents improperly taken by Trump in January, some of which contained classified information. In June, the DOJ’s top counterintelligence official and other federal officials traveled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and viewed additional material kept there by Trump, and they issued a subpoena demanding the return of classified material.

If you or I had some 21 boxes of potentially classified information in our home, the Feds wouldn’t ask for it politely or even issue a subpoena. They would have taken possession of that material right away, and we would face serious charges. The DOJ’s decision to wait and only obtain a search warrant after they received information that Trump had not relinquished all of the material was likely motivated by deference to the former president. Ironically this deference has likely strengthened a potential criminal prosecution of Trump.

DOJ’s repeated requests and demands to Trump and his team served the same purpose. It will be difficult for Trump to claim that he did not realize that the records he kept were national security secrets that rightfully belonged to the government, given that the government repeatedly told him so and demanded their return. Moreover, Trump was present when the DOJ visited Mar-a-Lago to meet with his lawyers and demand the records.

Despite Trump’s insistence that if the government wanted the records back, “all they had to do was ask,” the government repeatedly asked for the records and Trump refused to give them back, giving them only “what he believed they were entitled to.” Although Trump may believe that highly classified defense secrets are his own personal property, or that he could keep Top Secret documents because he informally “declassified” them without following established procedures, it will be difficult to convince jurors that he had a legitimate reason to keep such sensitive national security information at his Florida resort.

Trump’s defense appears to be that he “had a standing order” declassifying every document he brought to his residence. While I suspect Trump could find aides willing to testify that this is true, I doubt he disclosed this to the government during their months of negotiations and it is unlikely a jury would find this story convincing. Even if they did, none of the criminal statutes cited by the DOJ in the search warrant require that the documents were classified.

The reason why presidents can't keep their White House records dates back to Nixon
For the first two centuries of U.S. history, outgoing presidents simply took their documents with them when they left the White House. The materials were considered their personal property.

But for the past four decades, every presidential document — from notebook doodles to top-secret security plans — is supposed to go directly to the National Archives as the material is considered the property of the American people.

So when former President Donald Trump left office on Jan. 20, 2021, all his records should have traveled from the White House to the National Archives, according to Jason R. Baron, who served as director of litigation at the National Archives for 13 years.

"No president has the right to retain presidential records after he or she leaves office," Baron said. "And so it is an extraordinary circumstance if presidential records are found in a former president's residence or anywhere else under his control."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/13/trump-warrant-classified-answers/
paywall
 
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Hank77

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Trump defended himself after the search by saying he declassified the documents and claiming the Biden administration weaponized the agency. He has also claimed without evidence that former President Obama kept 33 million pages of documents, with “much” of them being classified.

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has also debunked Trump’s claim, saying it maintains classified Obama records in a government facility in the Washington, D.C., area.
It won't matter that his lies have been debunked. Millions of his followers only watch and read info. from FoxNews, OAN, etc. They only hear what he says and hang on to it for dear life.
 
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Hank77

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The Trump defence strategy appears to be twofold. One part is the catch-all claim that anything bad must have been planted by the FBI. That is an extraordinary scorched-earth path to take in the absence of any evidence
The OJ Simpson defense. The evidence was planted.
 
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NotUrAvgGuy

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It won't matter that his lies have been debunked. Millions of his followers only watch and read info. from FoxNews, OAN, etc. They only hear what he says and hang on to it for dear life.
I had a Christian friend, a dear lady, who labeled any news source other than OAN and a few others "mainstream media" or MSM. To her, anything and everything reported in MSM was suspect and likely a lie. The fact that I would even read an article from a MSM site made my confession of faith suspect. In the beginning, FOX was considered a trusted site until Trump had issues with them over a couple of articles and started calling them "fake news." From then on, FOX was MSM.

She would forward me reams of articles from obscure YouTube channels or prophecy websites that she would blindly trust. I would take the time to go through each one and test what they had to say. Every time I found factual errors. When I shared these with her, she would not respond. Her later defense was that she didn't have time to read my critiques. She did have time though to forward dozens of emails every day often commenting on them. At one point she told me that she had long ago done her due diligence and these were now trusted sources she no longer needed to verify.

She also had bizarre supposed insiders who got her information. One was supposedly the personal vet for Obama's pets. How on earth would the family vet know anything? I'm sure aids or interns dropped off the pets or the vet was taken to a visitor part of the White House. She also had sources who "knew people" in sensitive areas of the government. Naturally, these people could not be identified as it would expose them and that source of insider information would be lost.

During the post-election denial, she fed me one conspiracy theory after another. None of them proved to be true but she has never acknowledged that. The more I shined the light on the truth, the less she wanted to respond. She was also into endless End Times speculation. I finally had to part ways with her. Several times I asked her to quit sending me information but she would stop for a few days and then be right back at it. She told me she was one of a small group of "watchmen" appointed by God and given special discernment. It was her calling, as a watchman, to pass on information. I was blinded and could not see but she could. It was at once amusing and profoundly sad. She was so brainwashed into a way of thinking that she could no longer think for herself. She is a loving Christian woman who I greatly admire in many ways but hopelessly brainwashed when it came to all things Trump and End Times.
 
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BPPLEE

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I had a Christian friend, a dear lady, who labeled any news source other than OAN and a few others "mainstream media" or MSM. To her, anything and everything reported in MSM was suspect and likely a lie. The fact that I would even read an article from a MSM site made my confession of faith suspect. In the beginning, FOX was considered a trusted site until Trump had issues with them over a couple of articles and started calling them "fake news." From then on, FOX was MSM.

She would forward me reams of articles from obscure YouTube channels or prophecy websites that she would blindly trust. I would take the time to go through each one and test what they had to say. Every time I found factual errors. When I shared these with her, she would not respond. Her later defense was that she didn't have time to read my critiques. She did have time though to forward dozens of emails every day often commenting on them. At one point she told me that she had long ago done her due diligence and these were now trusted sources she no longer needed to verify.

She also had bizarre supposed insiders who got her information. One was supposedly the personal vet for Obama's pets. How on earth would the family vet know anything? I'm sure aids or interns dropped off the pets or the vet was taken to a visitor part of the White House. She also had sources who "knew people" in sensitive areas of the government. Naturally, these people could not be identified as it would expose them and that source of insider information would be lost.

During the post-election denial, she fed me one conspiracy theory after another. None of them proved to be true but she has never acknowledged that. The more I shined the light on the truth, the less she wanted to respond. She was also into endless End Times speculation. I finally had to part ways with her. Several times I asked her to quit sending me information but she would stop for a few days and then be right back at it. She told me she was one of a small group of "watchmen" appointed by God and given special discernment. It was her calling, as a watchman, to pass on information. I was blinded and could not see but she could. It was at once amusing and profoundly sad. She was so brainwashed into a way of thinking that she could no longer think for herself. She is a loving Christian woman who I greatly admire in many ways but hopelessly brainwashed when it came to all things Trump and End Times.
Thanks for sharing the story of one misguided individual. If you think that somehow applies to everyone who disagrees with you, you are wrong.
 
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NotUrAvgGuy

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Thanks for sharing the story of one misguided individual. If you think that somehow applies to everyone who disagrees with you, you are wrong.
Not at all! She was just one person. I expect people to disagree. That's normal. It helps if we can discuss our disagreements without getting offended. I tried to discuss with her but it didn't work so I let it go. I didn't want to lose a friend over it.
 
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BPPLEE

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Not at all! She was just one person. I expect people to disagree. That's normal. It helps if we can discuss our disagreements without getting offended. I tried to discuss with her but it didn't work so I let it go. I didn't want to lose a friend over it.
I think it's called confirmation bias. Some people only accept news that appeals to their point of view. You can find them on both sides.
 
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durangodawood

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I had a Christian friend, a dear lady, who labeled any news source other than OAN and a few others "mainstream media" or MSM. To her, anything and everything reported in MSM was suspect and likely a lie. The fact that I would even read an article from a MSM site made my confession of faith suspect. In the beginning, FOX was considered a trusted site until Trump had issues with them over a couple of articles and started calling them "fake news." From then on, FOX was MSM.

She would forward me reams of articles from obscure YouTube channels or prophecy websites that she would blindly trust. I would take the time to go through each one and test what they had to say. Every time I found factual errors. When I shared these with her, she would not respond. Her later defense was that she didn't have time to read my critiques. She did have time though to forward dozens of emails every day often commenting on them. At one point she told me that she had long ago done her due diligence and these were now trusted sources she no longer needed to verify.

She also had bizarre supposed insiders who got her information. One was supposedly the personal vet for Obama's pets. How on earth would the family vet know anything? I'm sure aids or interns dropped off the pets or the vet was taken to a visitor part of the White House. She also had sources who "knew people" in sensitive areas of the government. Naturally, these people could not be identified as it would expose them and that source of insider information would be lost.

During the post-election denial, she fed me one conspiracy theory after another. None of them proved to be true but she has never acknowledged that. The more I shined the light on the truth, the less she wanted to respond. She was also into endless End Times speculation. I finally had to part ways with her. Several times I asked her to quit sending me information but she would stop for a few days and then be right back at it. She told me she was one of a small group of "watchmen" appointed by God and given special discernment. It was her calling, as a watchman, to pass on information. I was blinded and could not see but she could. It was at once amusing and profoundly sad. She was so brainwashed into a way of thinking that she could no longer think for herself. She is a loving Christian woman who I greatly admire in many ways but hopelessly brainwashed when it came to all things Trump and End Times.
I think there's a lot of this delusion going round.

Many people are distressed at the chaos of human affairs and so are enticed by a good/evil story with loose ends tied up in a bow. Reality has nothing to do with it. Its about providing a sense of order, even if that implies war - or especially if it implies war: You know the sides. You know whos wrong. You have your mission.
 
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NotUrAvgGuy

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I think it's called confirmation bias. Some people only accept news that appeals to their point of view. You can find them on both sides.
Totally agree. She was just an extreme example.
 
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stevil

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I think it's called confirmation bias. Some people only accept news that appeals to their point of view. You can find them on both sides.
This is part of the problem, the attempt to divide the world up into two sides.

What about the neutrals? The people that don't care about R vs C?
The people that are just interested in the news because they want to know what is going on in the world.
 
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NotUrAvgGuy

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Trump is now claiming he had a standing rule that any documents he took home were automatically declassified. First, that makes no sense. These things must be handled on a document-by-document basis and after conferring with others. It's not the kind of thing you can have blanket rules about and there are still laws that govern the removal of documents regardless of their classification. Presidents don't have fiat power to overrule these laws. There is also no record of Trump having ever issued such a standing order. This seems to be a new claim he is attempting to retrofit to cover himself.

I read the following in the Washington Post this morning:

Then there was a 2018 lawsuit from the New York Times arguing that Trump had inadvertently declassified the existence of a program by mentioning it; Trump’s lawyers disagreed.

“To prevail in any claim of declassification,” the attorneys wrote in a filing, the Times had to show, “first, that President Trump’s statements are sufficiently specific; and second, that such statements subsequently triggered actual declassification.” Otherwise, the documents weren’t declassified. After all, they continued: “Declassification, even by the President, must follow established procedures.
(emphasis added)

There you have it. Trump's own lawyers arguing that declassification "must follow established procedures." As is often the case with Trump, the rules apply when he wants them to and can be swept aside when he doesn't want them. He thinks that being president means you can do whatever you want and make up the rules as you go. That might have worked in the business world as CEO of his own company, but even then there were laws he couldn't ignore regarding financial dealings and such. He just doesn't seem to get that he can't just do whatever he pleases.
 
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This is part of the problem, the attempt to divide the world up into two sides.

What about the neutrals? The people that don't care about R vs C?
The people that are just interested in the news because they want to know what is going on in the world.
They are not getting all their news from biased sources. We were discussing people who are.
 
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BPPLEE

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Correction "exclusively from biased sources..."
It's hard to find any sources that are not biased. Many people who think they are neutral are still watching biased sources. But probably not extremes.
 
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Pommer

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I had a Christian friend, a dear lady, who labeled any news source other than OAN and a few others "mainstream media" or MSM. To her, anything and everything reported in MSM was suspect and likely a lie. The fact that I would even read an article from a MSM site made my confession of faith suspect. In the beginning, FOX was considered a trusted site until Trump had issues with them over a couple of articles and started calling them "fake news." From then on, FOX was MSM.

She would forward me reams of articles from obscure YouTube channels or prophecy websites that she would blindly trust. I would take the time to go through each one and test what they had to say. Every time I found factual errors. When I shared these with her, she would not respond. Her later defense was that she didn't have time to read my critiques. She did have time though to forward dozens of emails every day often commenting on them. At one point she told me that she had long ago done her due diligence and these were now trusted sources she no longer needed to verify.

She also had bizarre supposed insiders who got her information. One was supposedly the personal vet for Obama's pets. How on earth would the family vet know anything? I'm sure aids or interns dropped off the pets or the vet was taken to a visitor part of the White House. She also had sources who "knew people" in sensitive areas of the government. Naturally, these people could not be identified as it would expose them and that source of insider information would be lost.

During the post-election denial, she fed me one conspiracy theory after another. None of them proved to be true but she has never acknowledged that. The more I shined the light on the truth, the less she wanted to respond. She was also into endless End Times speculation. I finally had to part ways with her. Several times I asked her to quit sending me information but she would stop for a few days and then be right back at it. She told me she was one of a small group of "watchmen" appointed by God and given special discernment. It was her calling, as a watchman, to pass on information. I was blinded and could not see but she could. It was at once amusing and profoundly sad. She was so brainwashed into a way of thinking that she could no longer think for herself. She is a loving Christian woman who I greatly admire in many ways but hopelessly brainwashed when it came to all things Trump and End Times.
This is exactly why it is a dubious thing to mix religion and politics. The absolute certainty of one’s Faith fused with the day-to-day political wranglings corrupts both into a veritable chimera of thought.
 
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stevil

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It's hard to find any sources that are not biased. Many people who think they are neutral are still watching biased sources. But probably not extremes.
Lots of people go out of their way to seek "both sides" of a story.
That doesn't mean they go to Fox news opinion shows, or Brietbart. But they find a claim, they then use those key words and add "debunk" into their search, or "fact check" or whatever.

I mean most people on this site are paying attention to the claims against Trump and these documents as well as to the defences Trump has counter claimed, and the defences some Republican allies have been presenting.
 
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