Trump: FBI “Stole” My Passports During Mar-a-Lago Raid
“This is an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our Country.”
Former President Donald Trump claimed on TruthSocial that the FBI still his passports.
Trump wrote: “Wow! In the raid by the FBI of Mar-a-Lago, they stole my three Passports (one expired), along with everything else. This is an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our Country. Third World!”
UPDATE
This is how Fake News works, folks. Biden admin actively feeds half truths & lies that the media willingly amplifies—advancing a partisan narrative to attack Trump.@NorahODonnell, did your “source” read you this email? Did you bother asking if they indeed seized the passports? https://t.co/DlzkagN0ie pic.twitter.com/VwCU7DPCvg
— Taylor Budowich (@TayFromCA) August 15, 2022
(You can follow Legal Insurrection on TruthSocial)
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Comments
So he can’t flee to Russia, right?
I guess any sarcastic remark has to be followed by an /s. or it will be misread.
Unless it’s so over the top that it cannot possibly be taken literally, yeah. If it’s something physically possible, there are probably leftists stupid enough to actually believe it.
I think he meant it sarcastically.
I’m sure he did. In my case, I can have as many as 50 sarcasms at a time without even breathing hard….
If true the FBI is going to have some difficulty in justifying that based on the warrant
First thing I thought.
And then there are the ‘binders of photos’.
I’m sure there are many other documents taken that should not have been. Even given the broad spectrum of the warrant.
The American Stasi refuses to allow an independent review, of course.
They answer only to The Party.
This reminds me of the jerks departing from the White House and taking the “w” keys off the computer keyboards with them — pointless, petty, unacceptable harassment. People who do such things are contemptible, and they don’t do the organizations they represent any favors.
That is theft, if it’s not in the warrent to surrender them I would think.
If indica of residence is in the warrant, which it usually is, that should cover it. They’ll grab IDs, bills, etc. to help show it’s the target’s residence.
I haven’t read the warrant for Mar a Lago, but that’s boilerplate for the cops around here.
Doesn’t the warrant say that any documents in the vicinity of documents with classification markings were to be seized?
Because petty vandalism is somehow, remotely comparable to political persecution, under color of law?
One might argue that those petty acts demonstrated the limits of their power injure and interfere or perhaps were themselves at the limits of their valor.
We have all observed that in the twenty+ years since the frequency and intensity of politically motivated actions by those in power has increased.
IOW, it isn’t the particular act but rather the willingness to be petty, vindictive and use one’s position, power or influence to harm their political rivals that is the true issue; broken windows theory applied to politically motivated govt actors.
FWIW, Israel stopped stamping passports several years back, probably for the reason you mention. Now you put your passport on a special machine that scans your photo, takes a current picture of your face, and compares the two. If everything checks out, it prints a petek with your B&W photo, name, date of entry, etc. and a bar code, which you must carry with your passport.
When it’s time to leave, you scan the passport again, insert the petek into the machine and go thru facial recognition again. ( And again. And again, remembering not to smile, and to remove your hat and glasses.)
When the AI agrees that it’s really you, the machine swallows your petek and you are cleared to exit.
Very slick, and no passport stamp to upset the countries that don’t want to admit Jew-lovers.
I seem to remember this was already in use in 2017 but it may have been in use earlier.
Ummm, how does he have two non-expired passports? If one is the official red one, he should have turned that one in when he left the White House. If not, then one of the others should be invalidated.
My first thought was one for Donald and one for Melania. But he calls them his three passports, so I donno.
Would former presidents have separate passports for cases where they might be representing the country, like state funerals overseas?
His government passport and his civilian passport – one for “official” travel, one for “personal” travel. It is not uncommon for miitary to have two, I’d imagine it’s the same for other government jobs, and he is a former president.
Many of us have multiple citizenships and passports. What’s so odd about that?
Even if he only holds US passport(s), it is likely that someone of his stature would have a second, US, passport book. Some countries deny entry to anyone with a Israeli stamp in their passport, so the US will issue two passports, to get around this issue. Sometimes you need multiple books for multiple visas.
According to State Dept you can have a dupe if you meet certain criteria which PDT very well could.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/have-passport/second-passport-book.html
I used to have a blue one and a red passport. One personal passport (usually blue) for purely personal travel overseas. One official passport (usually red) for overseas travel as an employee of the U.S. Government. In this case, the second one was likely a diplomatic passport (usually black) for high-level officials traveling overseas. Don’t know if that’s a standard ‘perk’ of being a former president or not, but it is not unheard of for former presidents to be asked to travel overseas as representatives of the sitting President (foreign state funerals, for example).
an expired passport would be more than 10 years old and I am pretty certain that he did not need one to travel out of the country as president. The timelime for the warrant only covered his time in office. That sounds like an improper seizure to me.
Later reporting indicates that two were expired and the other was his diplomatic p/p. They have been/will be returned.
Who’s down-voting?
The same one who has been sweeping through and doing a lot of downvoting of comments with neutral remarks or observations in other threads.
Rags? Is that you?
Probably Rags haunting the forum.
Or Fatkins.
Aka marx311, the limey prick.
Whatever happened to him anyway? I didn’t realize he wasn’t still derailing threads until you said something.
Probably still mumbling to himself in a padded room somewhere with a thorazine drip running in his restraints
Trumps mere existence drove him completely batshit crazy
“ Whatever happened to him anyway?”
Not enough.
Ah, the old days….
This makes me think President Trump did t know about the raid, as some have believed
Trump may be saying three passports on purpose. Notice the silence?
Why they took them, and whether they had any good reason to do so, I can’t say. But Trump’s claim that they “stole” them is clearly garbage, because they are US Government property, so it’s impossible for the FBI to have stolen them. In fact when they’re done with them and ready to give them back, it would be illegal for them to give them back to Trump; the law requires them to return the passports to the State Department, which may forward them back to Trump if it likes.
Milhouse, you need to learn to play the game.
You are totally 100% correct and will probably get tons of red yet again.
Trump is fighting a PR campaign with the masses, he used the right terms and scored bigly and is just getting started.
Apparently, the FBI doesn’t agree with your interpretation of the law.
It’s being reported that the FBI has returned the passports to Trump’s lawyers, earlier today.
If they did so, they broke the law. It’s as simple as that.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/doj-offers-trump-his-passports-back/ar-AA10H4Vt
So they haven’t returned them. They’ve offered to. Maybe they’ll actually obey the law and turn them over the State Dept, and they will return them to Trump. Or maybe they’ll ignore the law and return them directly. I don’t care; but the fact remains that returning them directly is illegal. And the fact remains that the US government can’t steal a US passport.
Does anyone here dispute that passports are government property?! That’s not really something you can dispute.
And it’s the same in every country. I’ve never heard of a country where passports are not government property.
No. No one disagrees with you on that. I assume no one’s responded to it because it’s irrelevant and boring. The fact that the passports are government property doesn’t make it okay for the police to just seize them without some kind of due process. (And that’s before we get to the inventory — which made no mention of passports.)
Using the word “steal” to mean taking something illegitimately is quite standard in English, without asserting a literal theft of personal property. See: stolen election, stolen base, stolen boyfriend.
Trying to score a “gotcha” against Trump by an overly-literal reading of a tweet is not a persuasive argument. After seven years of the game, it’s not even interesting.
Due process is only required to deprive someone of their life, liberty, or property. There is no such thing as “due process” for the government to take back its own property. There are internal procedures of the government, but those are its business, not anyone else’s. Calling it “stealing” is just wrong and inflammatory.
Words matter. As Rush Limbaugh used to say, words mean things.