Avaricious means greedy and that may go to motive, but avarice by itself is not a violation of Federal statutes. Trump has admitted to violating plenty of Federal statutes concerning classified documents. All has left is the "I can explain" defense.

That's a real problem for Trump. Even an attorney willing to risk their law license by working for Trump will not let Trump testify against himself. This is usually phrased as "for himself", but that's beyond Trump's ability.

Any argument based on "I thought I declassified the documents" collapses because it's quickly exposed as a lie. This leaves Trump with only one way to mitigate his crime and that is to explain why he wanted the documents and why he lied to keep the documents, after he was informed it was a crime. That story can only be told by Trump as his attorney slowly slips under the table.

 

Someone inside Mar a Lago definitely saw the boxes of classified material being moved around and told the FBI which is one of the reasons they got the search warrant.

But what if some of the staff were actually ordered to move those boxes of classified documents around? That would be another very serious crime in and of itself.

 

You obviously have not been following what going on...

I'll leave it at that, space alien!

 

Ok you might have us on Trump not being known for gardening and Melania is only known for killing them for campaign rallies at the White House.


But hey @shootersa does Trump clean his own room and make his own bed? Does he cook his own food and serve it himself? Does he clean Mar a Lago all by himself?

 

Trump hasn't picked up anything heavier than a 9 iron in about 20 years.

We can assume someone else moved the boxes from one place to the other. One can imagine what it's like to work in a Trump facility. The FBI had no shortage of sources inside Mar Lago, from maids to dishwashers.

 

When I was in the newspaper business some of my best sources to find out what was happening at school were the custodians. And to find out what was happening at town hall or even the police department I talked to the maintenance guys. That's one reason it jumbled out at me that the staff at Mar a Lago would be all but invisible to Trump and his inner circle. They would just take them for granted. But they would see and hear a lot. And its not liker I would be quoting the custodians and maintenance guys in a story. But they would have two very vital pieces of information. One what was really gong on but often more important where to look for the information and who else knew. Then I could dig out the information and documentation from more official sources.

And I remember one time the school superintendent suspected the custodians were talking to me and called a meeting with them to threaten them with their jobs if he caught them talking to me. I bet he had not even made it back to his office before I got the first call telling me about the meeting. And then I started getting nearly daily reports from them.

 

Boy, it's a good thing for the FBI that Trump can be counted on to run his organization like some one room school district up in Wyoming.
Otherwise, how the hell would they ever know what the fuck was going on?
And just think, it only took them 8 years to figure out that the butler would be the go to guy, you know, instead of the Niece Mary Trump, or Trump's lawyers (all that took was threatening them with disbarment) or that rascal Bannon.

Just think; we could have had Trump in jail by now but everyone kept relying on that rascal "anonymous" who, you know, turned out to be less than reliable. Yessir, shoulda gone with the butler right from the start.

 

The mark of a coward is they assume everyone is as motivated by fear as they are.

In my car days, my dealership had a service director who was kind of a Trump figure. He sang in his church choir on Sunday and falsified warranty claims on Monday. When that sort of thing is done, it should be at night in a locked office with a flashlight and a blanket over your head. He wasn't that careful, which is why I and everyone else in the building knew about it. He got upset because it got back to him that people were talking. His words were, "There's a mechanic who's gonna get fucked."

Nobody was scared. There's a truism in a shop, ''You can't fuck a mechanic". The way it works is simple. "Fucking over" is double entry book keeping. For every once you fuck over a mechanic, he can fuck back five times. If you can spot three of them, you're a genius.

 

Trump denounces ‘crime-fraud’ ruling forcing attorney to testify in documents probe
The ruling by the federal District Court in D.C. came as its chief judge wound up her term supervising the grand jury.



Judge Beryl Howell’s secret order on Friday required Evan Corcoran, pictured, to testify about matters he and Donald Trump had claimed were subject to attorney-client privilege. | Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo

By Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney

03/21/2023 08:58 PM EDT

Former President Donald Trump is fighting a federal judge’s determination that his communications with attorney Evan Corcoran — amid a grand jury probe of Trump’s handling of classified documents — likely contain evidence of a crime.

Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign issued a statement Tuesday attacking special counsel Jack Smith and the judge who issued the sealed ruling, Beryl Howell. The statement followed increasingly detailed news reports about Howell’s determination that Corcoran could be forced to testify and turn over related documents because prosecutors had shown sufficient evidence of an alleged effort to mislead investigators.


“Prosecutors only attack lawyers when they have no case whatsoever,” the Trump campaign statement said, arguing that an ABC News report and other anonymously sourced stories about the still-sealed decision are based on illegal disclosures. “These leaks are happening because there is no factual or legal basis or substance to any case against President Trump.”



The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed Howell’s order temporarily on Tuesday night, ordering an extraordinarily rapid series of filings in a matter of hours — including one from Trump’s team by midnight Tuesday.

The appeals court’s order — from Judges Cornelia Pillard, J. Michelle Childs and Florence Pan, all Democratic appointees — doesn’t identify Corcoran or the case at issue but makes clear that the government was on the winning side of the case in Howell’s court.

The three-judge panel is asking Trump’s attorneys to specify the precise set of documents at issue by midnight and for Smith’s team to respond by 6 a.m. Wednesday to the Trump team’s demand for a longer stay of Howell’s ruling.

A spokesperson for Smith declined to comment Tuesday on the closed-door fight.

The appeals court order followed the filing by Trump-linked attorneys of a pair of appeals and stay requests tied to Howell’s decision, which came on the final day of her seven-year tenure as chief judge of the federal District Court in Washington.

The parallel submissions asked the appeals court to block Howell’s decision while the appeals go forward, docket entries show. The appeals were first reported by CNN. The short-term “administrative” stay granted Tuesday night does not appear to signal whether the appeals court will decide to keep Howell’s order on ice as full legal briefing proceeds in the dispute.




The Trump campaign statement issued Tuesday evening also dismissed Howell, a former Democratic Senate aide appointed by former President Barack Obama, as a “Never Trump” judge.

Howell’s secret order on Friday required Corcoran to testify about matters he and Trump had claimed were subject to attorney-client privilege. Her order relied on the “crime-fraud exception,” which permits investigators to pursue evidence that would ordinarily be privileged but contains evidence of likely criminal conduct.

As chief judge, Howell supervised all disputes arising from grand jury proceedings happening in Washington. That responsibility passed Friday to U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, who succeeded Howell as chief, but only after Howell issued the potentially momentous privilege ruling in the Trump-related legal fight.

The Trump camp’s public attack on Howell appears to be its first aimed at the veteran jurist, with Trump notably avoiding attacks against her while she single-handedly presided over the numerous grand jury disputes arising from investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and into the classified documents.

Even after handing off the chief’s position, however, Howell continues to hold significant sway over matters connected to Trump’s inner circle. On Tuesday, she held a hearing in a lawsuit brought by two Georgia election workers against Rudy Giuliani, chiding the longtime Trump ally and his lawyer for what she described as an inadequate approach to required exchanges of evidence in the matter.

Proceedings related to the classified-documents grand jury, including efforts by prosecutors to compel Corcoran’s testimony, are occurring under seal — typical for nearly all grand jury proceedings.

However, the appeals court’s docket shows that the rulings being appealed were issued on Friday and correspond to a dispute that was filed with the District Court on Feb. 7. That’s just days before media reports emerged of an effort by Smith to force Corcoran to appear before a grand jury investigating the handling of classified records by Trump and his aides.

MOST READ



Just before noon Tuesday, the appeals court consolidated the two appeals without further public explanation. Of the three judges assigned to the dispute, Pillard is an Obama appointee, while Childs and Pan are appointees of President Joe Biden.

The grand jury probe of Trump, helmed by Smith, is an outgrowth of a monthslong battle between the National Archives and Trump to obtain hundreds of government records stashed at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after leaving office. Trump’s aides returned 15 boxes of records in January 2022, including some that bore classification markings. As a result, the Archives brought in the Justice Department to pursue whether Trump had retained additional classified material.

In May 2022, the Justice Department subpoenaed Trump’s office, demanding the production of any other classified materials he might possess at Mar-a-Lago. Justice Department officials traveled in early June to Mar-a-Lago, where they briefly interacted with Trump and picked up a folder of records deemed classified. Trump’s team then certified that they had thoroughly searched the premises and turned over remaining classified documents.

But the department developed evidence suggesting that this wasn’t the case, leading to an Aug. 8, 2022, search of the property, where dozens of additional documents with classification markings were discovered.

Corcoran, who was Trump’s primary point of contact with the Archives and the Justice Department, has faced scrutiny for his involvement in efforts to certify that Trump had returned all potentially classified materials.

The legal maneuvering comes as Trump’s lawyers are also awaiting a potential indictment of their client in an unrelated case in New York, an investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg into details of a hush money payment made in 2016 to the porn actress Stormy Daniels.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/21/trump-crime-fraud-attorney-documents-probe-00088215

 

I think this is right. The courts are seeing the kinds of top secret material Trump had and are moving as swiftly as possible to try and end a national security threat.


It has to be serious for the DOJ to want to breach attorney-client privilege: analysis

Sarah K. Burris
March 22, 2023



Donald Trump in the White House. (vasilis asvestas / Shutterstock.com)


The court rulings around Donald Trump's document scandal reveal that there was a crime committed, and that's the reason that the court agreed to breach attorney-client privilege. It's a point that Los AngelesTimes legal columnist Harry Litman said shouldn't be ignored.

"We are talking about the subpoena and the false declaration that is a crime in itself, very possibly," said Litman about the information in the classified documents scandal. "And the only reason you could find a crime-fraud exception here is because the actual communications between [Trump lawyer Evan] Corcoran and Trump are themselves evidence of a crime. Stop and think about that. What is the least it could be? This is one Corcoran is preparing to, well, actually tell Christina Bobb, 'sign this, it will be okay. We've done a diligent search and we have turned over everything.' That was a lie. That is a serious lie. And in sort of prosecutorial terms, a very clean one."

He went on to say that it isn't just words that are involved in this case, but the invoices as well.

"We have tantalizing personal audio recordings," Litman explained. "Clearly, it is almost — the least it could be is very strong evidence of Trump participating in a clear violation with that subpoena and the false declaration. It could be the centerpiece of this Mar-a-Lago case. And it seems possible that it is close to the final nail in the case he is building."

MSNBC host Chris Hayes explained that it isn't normal to breach attorney-client privilege. The bar for that is high.

On MSNBC, former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade agreed, saying that it's rare that the Justice Department would make such a move.

"It is sacrosanct. The Justice Department respects it," said McQuade. "I can remember in 20 years at the U.S. attorney's office — one time when we did seek that high-level approval to pierce the attorney-client privilege. It was because the attorney was working with the client in a conspiracy. They were both in on it. But we went through all of the steps, the judge reviewed the material, and then determined that yes, because of the evidence, there was a crime here. But never, to answer your question, have I seen a situation where the client was trying to use the lawyer as a pawn to fulfill a crime— that may be what is happening here."

See the full discussion in the video below or at the link here.

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-documents-break-privilege/

 

How low will they go?

 

This Trump lawyer will be the most 'sharply incriminating' witness against his boss: Former prosecutor

Matthew Chapman
March 23, 2023



Jack Smith, Donald Trump (Smith photo by Robin Van Lonkhuijsen for AFP/ Trump by Saul Loeb for AFP)


Former Donald Trump attorney Evan Corcoran is set to testify to a grand jury empaneled by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents investigation. This comes after Smith secured a ruling from a federal judge ordering Corcoran, who is accused of misleading investigators, to turn over documents, creating an exception to usual attorney-client privilege.

On MSNBC Thursday, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner explained what could make this such a bad situation for the former president.

"Let me turn to Jack Smith's other investigation," said anchor Ayman Mohyeldin. "The former president's attorneys expected to testify before the grand jury as soon as, I guess tomorrow, in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. What do you make of that? Why is that significant?"

"You know, it's hugely consequential," said Kirschner. "We don't often have criminal defense attorneys testify about the clients' crimes, except when the crime-fraud exception applies, which causes the attorney-client privilege to evaporate."

IN OTHER NEWS: 'Felony offenses': House Oversight chairman's remarks in 2015 email leak spark calls for investigation

"I think the most interesting thing now moving forward is whether Evan Corcoran will plead the Fifth Amendment, will invoke his own Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, because he believes he was complicit in Donald Trump's crimes, or if he believes that he was an unwitting dupe, Donald Trump was giving him false information and he was simply certifying it and passing it on to the federal government."

If it's the latter, Kirschner then, "his truthful testimony would not incriminate him."

"He'd have no reason to plead the Fifth and he can testify and, frankly, become one of the most sharply incriminating witnesses against his former client Donald Trump" said Kirschner. "So even though the grand jury proceedings are secret, so we may not know these things right away, I suspect we'll know them before too long."

Watch video below or at this link.

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-lawyer-testimony/

 

This low?
Why yes, but even lower.

Whatever it takes.

 

Well maybe not. As chief of staff Mark Meadows knows a lot more about the classified documents and J6 than Trump's lawyers do. We already know the White House Counsel''s office went to Meadows and told him the National Archives knew Trump was hoarding documents and if Trump tried to leave the White House with them instead of turning them over it would constitute a crime. Are we to believe Meadows just didn't bother to tell Trump what the WH Counsel's office told him? Because if Meadows did relay that information to Trump and he stole the documents anyway that shows premeditation he knew he was committing crimes.

And here again there is a loot more going on than what we know so far. Investigations of this magnitude usually just plod along at a snails pace with new developments and especially court decisions usually taking months. But in this case suddenly both the lower court and the appeals court are moving at speeds no one has ever seen before Which some experts have said might indicate threats to national security are involved.



Meadows, other top Trump aides ordered to testify in Jan. 6 probe as judge rejects claims of executive privilege
Trump's attorneys had challenged the subpoenas by asserting executive privilege.

ByJohn Santucci, Katherine Faulders, and Jonathan Karl
March 24, 2023, 10:17 AM



7:21

ABC News Live


A federal judge has rejected former President Donald Trump's claims of executive privilege and has ordered Mark Meadows and other former top aides to testify before a federal grand jury investigating Trump's efforts to overturn the election leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

Meadows, Trump's former chief of staff, was subpoenaed along with the other former aides by Special counsel Jack Smith for testimony and documents related to the probe.

Trump's legal team had challenged the subpoenas by asserting executive privilege, which is the right of a president to keep confidential the communications he has with advisers.


In a sealed order last week, Judge Beryl Howell rejected Trump's claim of executive privilege for Meadows and a number of others, including Trump's former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, his former national security adviser Robert O'Brien, former top aide Stephen Miller, and former deputy chief of staff and social media director Dan Scavino, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Former Trump aides Nick Luna and John McEntee, along with former top DHS official Ken Cuccinelli, were also included in the order, the sources said.

Recent Stories from ABC News

Trump is likely to appeal the ruling, according to sources briefed on the matter.

"The DOJ is continuously stepping far outside the standard norms in attempting to destroy the long accepted, long held, Constitutionally based standards of attorney-client privilege and executive privilege," a Trump spokesperson said in a statement. "There is no factual or legal basis or substance to any case against President Trump. The deranged Democrats and their comrades in the mainstream media are corrupting the legal process and weaponizing the justice system in order to manipulate public opinion, because they are clearly losing the political battle."

Meadows did not respond to ABC's request for comment and neither did an attorney representing him. Ratcliffe, O'Brien, Miller, Luna, McEntee and Cuccinelli did not respond to ABC's request for comment. An attorney representing Scavino also did not respond.


Former White House Chief of Staff during the Trump administration Mark Meadows speaks at FreedowmWorks headquarters on Nov. 14, 2022 in Washington, D.C.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images, FILE
Some of the aides that have been ordered to testify have already appeared before the grand jury but did not answer some questions related to interactions with the former president, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News, and thus would now be required to return for additional testimony. The grand jury proceedings are being held under seal.

It's not clear the amount of information each of them would have, or the scope of what prosecutors want to question them on, the sources said.


ABC News previously reported that in February, prosecutors investigating Jan. 6 moved to compel testimony from a number of top Trump aides, including Meadows, Ratcliffe and O'Brien.

Previously, Judge Howell had rejected Trump's claim of executive privilege to block the testimony of two top aides to Vice President Pence, Greg Jacob and Marc Short. In rejecting Trump's motion to block the testimony of Jacob and Short, the judge ruled that it is up to the current president to assert executive privilege, not a former president, according to sources familiar with the proceedings.

The judge also previously ruled that former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, along with his deputy Pat Philbin, also had to return to the grand jury to answer additional questions after Trump previously argued they were protected by privilege.

Howell is being succeeded by a new chief judge on the D.C. district court, who will now oversee grand jury matters related to the special counsel's probes.

Smith, a longtime federal prosecutor and former head of the Justice Department's public integrity section, was tapped in November by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee the Justice Department's investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election and Trump's handling of classified materials after leaving office.



Meadows, who according to sources was subpoenaed in January, was one of the only aides around Trump on Jan. 6 as the attack unfolded. He was also party to the infamous January 2021 phone call that Trump had with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump asked Raffensperger to "find" him enough votes to win the state.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/meadows-top-trump-aides-ordered-testify-jan-6/story?id=98101813

 

Trump lawyer's testimony likely seals the deal for indictment in docs case: legal expert

Gideon Rubin
March 24, 2023



President Donald Trump, speaks to the media in the Rose Garden at the White House. (Shutterstock.com)


The testimony of Donald Trump’s lawyer on Friday before a federal grand jury likely seals the deal for an indictment in the classified documents case, a former top law enforcement official told CNN.

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said that from an investigative standpoint, Evan Corcoran’s testimony was “icing on the cake” for special counsel Jack Smith.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell on Wednesday ordered the former president’s lawyer to provide evidence to prosecutors under the crime-fraud exception.

Corcoran was seen by reporters entering federal court Friday morning, and McCabe said the Justice Department has since presented evidence to Howell implicating Corcoran and Trump in a crime or a cover-up, confirming that Trump’s lawyer did in fact provide evidence to the grand jury Friday.

Corcoran’s testimony, according to McCabe, makes an indictment against the former president “almost guaranteed.”

“Talking to Corcoran as they did today, and understanding exactly what those conversations involve is like the icing on the cake, and I think it also makes an indictment on the activity around the documents almost guaranteed at this point,” McCabe said.

Watch the video below or at this link.



https://www.rawstory.com/trump-lawyer-testimony-2659653655/

 

Ah God!
FINALLY!
WE GOT THAT RASCAL!!
THEY'RE GONNA DO IT!!
THEY'RE GONNA INDICT TRUMP!!
FOR ............ WELL YOU JUST WAIT AND SEE!!
WATCH OUT NOW!! TRUMP'S PERP WALK IS COMING!!!

Too little too late.
After 8 years of listening to the regular "We got Trump!" and nothing happening but more yammer, even if he were dragged out by his heels we'd have to say, Too little, too late.
Incompetence in the face of resistance becomes a laughing matter.

 

‘I Have the Right to Take Stuff’: Trump Assures Hannity He’d Take Government Documents After Host Tells Him He Wouldn’t
By Michael LucianoMar 27th, 2023, 9:54 pm
1075 comments


Former President Donald Trump told Sean Hannity he has “the right to take stuff” such as government documents as the former president.

Trump addressed the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago estate in August where agents found troves of government documents, some of which were classified. The material in question was supposed to be turned over to the National Archives when Trump left office.

The former president took President Joe Biden to task for being embroiled in his own classified documents scandal. Material from Biden’s days as vice president and as a senator has been found at his properties.


“I’ve known you for decades,” Hannity said to Trump during an interview on Monday night on Fox News. “I can’t imagine you ever saying, ‘Bring me some of the boxes that we brought back from the White House. I’d like to look at them.’ Did you ever do that?”

“I would have the right to do that,” Trump responded. “There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“But I know you,” Hannity said. “I don’t think you would do it.”

Trump replied by disabusing Hannity of the idea he wouldn’t do that by telling him, yes, he would.


“I don’t have a lot of time, but I would have the right to do that,” he said. “I would do that.”

“All right, let me move on,” Hannity said, trying to steer Trump away from the topic.

“Remember this,” Trump continued, plowing ahead. “This is the Presidential Records Act. I have the right to take stuff.”

He reiterated, “I have the right to take stuff and look at stuff. I have the right to look at stuff.”

Trump then slammed the FBI for “viciously” raiding his home.

“The way they treated people is terrible,” he said. “They treat people like a foreign country enemy.”

Watch above via Fox News.


https://www.mediaite.com/politics/i...nt-documents-after-host-tells-him-he-wouldnt/

 

*sips tea*

34 criminal counts. Gotta love it.

unless, of course, you’re having a meltdown at the moment.

 

Kinda looks like the Don....