Mar-a-Lago Raid Affidavit Redaction: “What we all really want to see is what was the emergency?”
My interview on NewsMax: “I think the public is entitled to know if there is a there, there, and if there is Trump will have to deal with it, but if there’s not, it’s gonna help him enormously, politically.”
This week expect Donald Trump to file a motion to appoint a special master to oversee the FBI/DOJ review of the dozens of boxes of documents seized during the Mar-a-Lago raid.
Trump’s lead counsel for the matter, James Trusty, told conservative radio talk show host Mark Levin on his show on Friday that the former president’s legal team will “very soon” file a motion related to the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures.
rusty said appointing a special master, which is an official selected by a judge to carry out a judicial matter on the court’s behalf, is rare in relation to search warrants being executed, but there needs to be “somebody in the middle” because the Justice Department (DOJ) should not be able to be “the guardians of what’s privileged or not.”
He said one of the benefits of appointing a special master is stopping the DOJ in inspecting the documents.
Trump hinted on his social media platform Truth Social earlier on Friday that he would take legal action against the search related to the Fourth Amendment, claiming his rights have been violated.
Trump posted on Truth Social:
A major motion pertaining to the Fourth Amendment will soon be filed concerning the illegal Break-In of my home, Mar-a-Lago, right before the ever important Mid-Term Elections. My rights, together with the rights of all Americans, have been violated at a level rarely seen before in our Country. Remember, they even spied on my campaign. The greatest Witch Hunt in USA history has been going on for six years, with no consequences to the scammers. It should not be allowed to continue!
My reaction is: What took so long? This motion to appoint a special master should have been filed almost immediately. The feds have had almost two weeks to review those boxes. The DOJ so-called “taint team” likely is only sealing off from main line prosecutors materials possibly covered by attorney-client privilege, but there are a lot of other documents the feds should not have seized under an overly broad search warrant.
The feds have until August 25 to submit their proposed redactions to the search warrant Affidavit, after the Magistrate ruled that the government had not made a showing (yet) that the entire document should be withheld.
I appeared on NewsMax this morning to talk about the secrecy and the need for release of as much information as possible.
Excerpts (transcript auto-generated, may contain transcription errors)
I think you see a typical political divide in the media. On the left or the mainstream corporate media, it’s almost celebration that they’re, they finally have Trump. Remember for so many years, we heard, the walls are closing in, they’re finally gonna get ’em. So there’s really cheerleading for the government, from the mainstream corporate media and the left wing media. Whereas the right wing media is extremely skeptical of this.
I mean, we’ve seen this movie before we saw it with Russia collusion where every day it seemed it was a new bombshell leaked to the press by the government and you give 24-48 hours and it wouldn’t pan out. So I think, you know, the media coverage reflects the politics…
…. I have no doubt the government is going to extremely heavily redacted almost in its entirety. They don’t want even a single word released. They don’t want anything to the public to know anything about it. So I think the government will submit to the magistrate in secret. We’ll never get to see what they submit. Extremely heavily redacted document. And the magistrate will then potentially hold a hearing with the government again, in secret, we’re not gonna get to watch this over it. And I have also have no doubt if the magistrate releases anything of substance, they’re gonna take it up to a court of appeals and try to get it reversed. So the government does not want anybody to know anything that led up to this, which is of course is the opposite of what we should know. We should know a lot more when a former president, almost certain candidate and likely nominee for 2024 is the subject of [such a raid] ….
[The release] may be favorable to him, it may not be favorable to him, and let the public view that. But I think as with anybody, who’s the target of the government. You want the information out there, you want to know what you’re potentially being accused of. I mean, as of this moment, he would not really know. All we have are selective leaks to the press. So we hear these fantastical claims that he had nuclear secrets. He had the names of spies, all this other stuff. And we don’t know if any of that’s actually true. All we know is that this is Russia collusion, again, leaks from the government, selective leaks from the government to favorable media outlets….
…. if you understand [the media’s] motivations, it makes sense that they would side with the government. They want Donald Trump prosecuted. They have wanted him prosecuted since the day he wrote down those that escalator at Trump Tower. The prosecutor in New York, the attorney general ran her campaign for attorney general announcing she was gonna get Trump. So they want him convicted and they want him at least charged. And if the government keeping things secret for a few more months, gets them there. They are happy to do that, even though you would think it would be the opposite of what media would want. Media always wants more information, not less information ….
Well, I think it will backfire again [if there’s nothing seriously damaging to Trump]. I mean, this is again, Russia collusion. They always think they have him. And if there’s nothing damaging there, or if it shows cooperation, Trump’s attorneys have said that they were cooperating, they were meeting, they were speaking. And this came out of nowhere.
What we all really want to see is what was the emergency? There have been leaks to the press. I think it was to the New York times or somebody else that Merrick Garland took three weeks to make the decision on this. Well, that’s inconsistent with the claims that he had such sensitive information. They couldn’t wait any longer and it had to raid Mar Lago. So I think the public is entitled to know if there is a there, there, and if there is Trump will have to deal with it, but if there’s not, it’s gonna help him enormously, politically.
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Comments
Letting the DOJ selectively redact is akin to letting Hillary purge her own illegal emails. Or Al Capone picking his own jury.
Heck, I would even go out of country to pick an impartial special master.
Among the outrages is that of going through Mrs. Trump’s closet. Unless there is probable cause/justification for that part of the warrant, those who ransacked that should be charged and fired.
Don’t forget that way back when, Hillary Clinton had hundreds of FBI files in her closet, each of which was a felony. Maybe they were hoping for a repeat.
Well, the unpopular truth is (whether anyone likes it or not)- the warrant ( as does any similar warrant) does cover places like that.
Her “closet” is a room in a facility under cover of the warrant just like if there was a warrant to search your house for a child’s/spouses “drugs” or whatnot- your closet would be covered too.
That’s just the way it is with a search warrant.
Hmmm
1.5 years to request a warrant
Weeks to decide to sign it
Days to raid after approved
I’m having a hard time reconciling the facts with an emergency.
Well Doc, let me help you with that
There was no 1.5 years to request a warrant- that’s pure fantasy
Regarding the time to review/sign- doesn’t mean much except that even the DOJ didn’t think there was much risk in this “evidence” would be destroyed or moved. ( they could have moved for an emergency hearing)
Days to raid sounds to me like a strategic decision which does in fact allude to an “emergency” ( or lets say a heightened need to be strategic but until the affidavit is revealed, we cant be sure)
The “emergency” is most likely fear of something Trump is going to do that the “fruits of the warrant” were supposed to either stop altogether or form the basis of charges to derail Trump’s intended actions.
Remember, they didn’t just “up and decide” to execute a warrant based on what’s out there now.
There is a piece(s) missing
They are going to keep digging & planting until they have something they think they can put him in jail for. It’s that simple.
Yup. It’s all smoke; all mirrors; all kabuki theatre orchestrated to prevent Trump from running for potus 2024. Their only other option is assassination, and that would shatter the dark glass even too much for deep state.
“that would shatter the dark glass even too much for deep state.”
Perhaps not. The globalists got away with assassinating a sitting president in broad daylight and turning his brain to confetti on a Dallas street in 1963. EVERY ONE of them got away with murder. Would it really surprise anyone if they tried it again? A desperate beast often acts with insanity to save itself.
the emergency is that the elections are coming up and the Democrats desperately want Trump to be the primary issue, rather than their disastrous incompetence.
True, they want the Republican party running toward Trump so that they can turn out their Trump-deranged base in November despite “their disastrous incompetence”.
In an honest election, that “running toward Trump” group far outnumbers their deranged base.
The only benefit to waiting this long to demand a special master is:… give these idiots the rope needed to hang themselves. The DOJ and FBI have so thoroughly tarnished themselves, that all is left now is for the inevitable leaks to the press and to the Jan6 committee. We’ll see stuff trickle out in Sept/Oct for the midterms. Esp for the Jan6 cmte. Cements them all as over-reaching jerks and Trump as a victim. .. just like a movie script.
What I am most interested in learning, exactly, is what exactly is the case the Feds claim to have that Trump violated the statutes identified in the warrant.
You and the rest of the world
Doubtless the affy will show they were tipped “Victoria’s Secret”, justifying both the extreme unction, and pawing through Melania’s underwear drawers.
Seems to me that the horse is out of the barn. By now, they’ve probably already made copies of everything & if they were.planning on planting anything in the documents it would already be in place.
In my opinion they have already made copies of every document they seized. It would not be out of the norm for them to have altered some of the documents seized as well.
Hopefully Trump was smart enough to have a spare copy buried somewhat, maybe in a sand trap at one of the golf courses.
Seriously, the odds of the DOJ physically “altering” documents is really Hollywood, not reality, and not going to happen.
Here’s why:
The DOJ cannot possibly know how many certified true originals and certified copies (and often filming of documents to get it all on digital) exist.
Nobody in their right mind would take a chance like that. That would not only be political but legal suicide is even 1 instance was ever proven.
One word:
Clinesmith
Cute but not the same situation or circumstances
Certainly not, but it shows their willingness, ability and political drive to do so.
And there is no likelihood of getting even a wrist slap for it.
I would like to think, or hope, that with the possibility of that many copies out there, somebody would leak it.
Distinction without a difference.
The “emergency” probably is that Trump has Epstein’s client list and they desperately want it back.
Trump was out of town and they had to finish the raid before he returned.
That’s more of DOJ “white propaganda” than truth for a number of reasons.
First, if the warrant was “legitimate” (notice that word- didn’t say legal or procedurally correct)- then it would make no difference if Trump was physically present or what “grandstanding” he may have done with the media. Actually, in a “real’ warrant service- its usually DESIRABLE for the suspect to be there so he can be “observed” and possibly arrested is incriminating things are found.
The “decision” to wait till Trump was physically absent sends my spider sense into a warp core breach. As an observer, the only “reason” I can deduce from what we have in the media is that they didn’t want to face QUESTIONS The Trump team would ask.
Also, IF TRUMP HAD ADVANCED NOTICE (which I believe he did), then his being “out of town” was probably deliberate as well on Trump’s part.
That’s all experience based speculation based on information in the media but it makes a degree of sense.
The so-called FBI agents conducted the raid like a Taurus in a china shop.
Actually no, they were surprisingly gentle compared to what they can do under a warrant
Melania said all of her panties were neatly refolded.
Making sure that the “News Media” had something else to talk about rather than the first anniversary of the Afghanistan pull out debacle.
Hillary’s father and Biden s father both should have pulled out – would have saved the world a lot of grief.
I’m sure the DOJ has already had its greasy hands all over Trump’s documents and scanned every one of them.
As to the affidavit, we all know that there’s nothing in it but lies. The FBI and DOJ have worked very hard for the past 6+ years to demonstrate to everyone that they are liars, cheats, and thieves and will make up the most outrageous stories about Trump in order to try and railroad him into a conviction. The FBI and DOJ are known liars and deserve no benefit of the doubt, at all. In fact, in light of their history over the past 6 years it should be assumed that the DOJ and FBI are breaking the law in yet another attempt to imprison President Trump any way they can.
x 1,000,000,000
I dont understand why President Trump had any documents at Mara Lago…
They have been perp walking all
Of his associates, including Bannon and Navarro, he had to known they were coming, it was just a matter of when
All the documents he had should have been placed somewhere they couldn’t touch them, including overseas .
I would think anything of importance is kept elsewhere and what ever was “captured” during the “raid” was shit the FBI knew Trump knew they were coming for.
@Gonzotx
>>>I dont understand why President Trump had any documents at Mara Lago…
Easy, BAIT
At this point, they have planted what they wanted… period
I’m waiting for the answer as to why it was so important to take such and unprecedented step and stage a spectacle like this, too.
Trump has been out of office 18 months, he and his lawyers have been co-operating with the DOJ all along, the DOJ visited his home earlier this year and the only suggestion was to have the Secret Service put a better lock on the room where this stuff was then The Grey Man dithered for 3 weeks over the raid, gave the go ahead only for the FBI to wait 3 days to do it. Doesn’t sound like an emergency to me. It sounds like a political jihad.
I think your observation is about as close as we are going to get without a full release of everything to evaluate.
By the process of elimination (no legal urgency) it had to be political by default.
That begs the question “To what end”?
I have 3 theories I will put forth just as my own possible reasons for the masses.
1) they discovered ( got wind) that Trump has “something” and was about to spring a trap of his own so they attempted to pre-empt/stall it.
2)They really need another Trump debacle for the mid terms and this was the best they could manufacture on short notice
3) They (and the GOPe/RINO caucus) have taken serious notice of Trump’s popularity, influence and likelihood of him getting a MAGA base in Congress and the WH in 24 and are hoping this will somehow make people “hate” Trump.
I think the whole truth is in some combination but given the primaries, its possible that #3 was the sense of urgency driving this.
What do you think?
“I think the whole truth is in some combination …”
The healing power of “and.” Winner, winner!
I don’t think any of those theories are mutually exclusive.
They needed another hoax to drag into November, and the decision not to release the affidavit, or most of it, plays into this, but perpetuating leaks and insinuations by a groveling, leftist media.
I don’t think they are either.
I have a different theory on what the truth really is based on some “things” I have been told.
Here is the short version so we can see if any of it happens as things get leaked.
I have heard “stories” that the “REAL” high value items Trump has are items from Hunter’s laptop implicating Biden and others with China/Russia and other elements. He also has information on how the FBI covered for that and Hillary’s server.
Basically this Hillary stuff was a red herring and Trump has criminal evidence that can bring the current administration and key players from several agencies down and is going to start releasing this very soon.
If any of this is true, it explains the urgency of the FBI and possibly why they are hiding things.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I’m curious myself.
The trap was already sprung. Take a look at Trump’s RICO suit filed in March and subsequent motions by both sides.
I have a feeling that’s not it.
Granted a “feeling” is hardly anything to go out on a limb for but time will tell
“I’m waiting for the answer…”
You will be waiting until Hell freezes over.
As if they haven’t already.
How will they parse the documents that “justice” removed from the documents that “justice” created and inserted?
The mere fact that the FBI and Justice touched anything is to say that any “evidence” is tainted, contrived and other than reliable.
At most, the gestapo succeeded in inserting themselves into Trump’s wife’s panties. Given Wray’s intellectual development and the tawdriness of feckless federal freaks in government outfits, this may have been their primary motive.
Trumps’ should get a black light or have a forensic examination made of the garments and closets to inspect for biological evidence of “boys behaving badly”.
Was Gary Busey on the raid team?
At a guess, Gary probably avoids law enforcement folks when possible 🙂
A heavily redacted affidavit is factually worthless
‘…there needs to be “somebody in the middle”’ Huh? That “somebody in the middle” IS in the middle. It’s called the US Constitution. If this action doesn’t violate the 4th Amendment, then I need to go back to school and learn more about the US Constitution.
And even if/when they uncover even flagrant abuses by the FBI and/or DOJ, who’s going to adjudicate those? The DOJ is thoroughly corrupt, and you’d be hard pressed to find an honest or unbiased judge or jury anywhere these days. Congress can hold a dozen “kabuki” hearings where nothing happens to anyone EVER. And you can be darn sure no media is going to report honestly about any of this. They’re playing a long game and could give two hoots about the Rule of Law or the Constitutional rights of any citizen, even a former President.
The excuse that this was all about the National Archives sure didn’t last long (and for good precedent/reason):
Judicial Watch vs National Archives and Records Administration March 2012
“Under the statutory scheme established by the PRA, the decision to segregate personal materials from Presidential records is made by the President, during the President’s term and in his sole discretion.”
“Since the President is completely entrusted with the management and even the disposal of Presidential records during his time in office, it would be difficult for this Court to conclude that Congress intended that he would have less authority to do what he pleases with what he considers to be his personal records.”
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/district-of-columbia/dcdce/1:2010cv01834/144698/13/
That was before Trump became President. Now that Trumps been in office the rules have been changed.