Trump personally packed a stash of documents returned from Mar-a-Lago, report says. He kept hundreds more until the FBI seized them.

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Mia Jankowicz
Tue, October 4, 2022 at 6:00 AM·2 min read





Former President Donald Trump leaves Trump Tower in New York City, on August 10, 2022.James Devaney/GC Images

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  Trump personally packed up 15 boxes of material returned to NARA in January, per The Washington Post.
  
  
• Trump tried but failed to get a lawyer to claim that was all the documents he had, per the report.
  
  
• Many secret and classified records were later found in the August FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.
  

Former President Donald Trump personally packed a trove of documents returned to the National Archives in January, while keeping many records back, The Washington Post reported.

Trump also instructed a lawyer to say all the documents sought by the records agency had been returned, the paper reported. It said he refused to do as he could not be sure it was true.

The Post reported this on the basis of unnamed sources familiar with the matter.

A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to the Post's specific questions, and did not immediately reply to Insider's request for comment.

The report that Trump himself selected the documents to be returned from Mar-a-Lago, while keeping some behind, could worsen his position in the legal case against him.

Trump packed up the 15 boxes under intense secrecy, keeping the process out of the view even of top aides, per earlier reporting from the Post.



But his lawyer Alex Cannon in February refused to sign it, the report said. Cannon, per the report, was not convinced that there really were no more documents at Mar-a-Lago.

Several months later another Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, signed a similar statement asserting that a "diligent search" of Mar-a-Lago had located no further documents that needed to be returned.

But as officials analyzed Trump's documents and found at least 100 classified records among them, the National Archives asked the Justice Department to begin an investigation which would lead to the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago in August.

That raid found many more documents which were not returned in the earlier handover, including those with high levels of classification.

In response to the Post's reporting, a spokesperson for Trump did not address the substance of the reporting but attacked the outlet instead.

The spokesperson asserted that the Post was "the partisan microphone of leakers and liars buried deep within the bowels of America's government."

Read the original article on Business Insider

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-personally-packed-stash-documents-120026586.html

 

Trump pushed DOJ beyond 'tipping point' as Garland considers indictments: legal expert

Bob Brigham
October 08, 2022



Judge Merrick Garland testifies before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on his nomination to be US Attorney General(AFP)


Donald Trump has created nightmares for his legal team and may have pushed the Department of Justice beyond the tipping point as Attorney General Merrick Garland considers indictments.

"Tonight, what is he still hiding?" asked MSNBC anchor Ayman Mohyeldin. "New allegations that Trump might have kept more documents from the National Archives."

He explained the difficult situation facing Trump's lawyers, "because it's not just the mess he's in right now, it's that, as we learn on a near daily basis with this guy, there is always more with Trump. More scandal, more illegality, and more pain for his lawyers."

For analysis, Mohyeldin interviewed NYU Law Prof. Ryan Goodman.

The host said, "what a crazy chaotic week it is, but this revelation that Donald Trump may still have documents that the U.S. government wants has to be one of the most bizarre developments of the entire saga."

'I totally agree," Goodman replied, saying "it really does push the Justice Department towards an indictment."

"This is the very kind of activity, of obstruction, that is the tipping point, many times, for the Justice Department, after they already accumulated the evidence sufficient for indictment, as to whether or not to prosecute," Goodman said. "I think this is just outrageous and outlandish that he would still have documents."

Watch below or at this link:

https://www.rawstory.com/doj-trump-indictments/

 

I'm curious, when did Trump start taking these documents to Mar-a-lago? I mean, if he began well before the end of this term, there might have been other eyes looking at them while he was away pretending to govern.

 

You sit up all night coming up with that one?
Or was it fed to you?

 

Nighty night.
Sleep tight.
Don't let the bed bugs bite!

 

All Trump does is lie and use psychological projection falsely accusing others of what he is actually guilty of himself. So this is a huge clue of what he stole.


Trump suggests FBI planted book on how to build a nuclear bomb in Mar-a-Lago documents

Sarah K. Burris
October 09, 2022



President Donald J. Trump speaking at his campaign rally in Des Moines, Iowa at Drake University's Knapp Center. (Aspects and Angles / Shutterstock.com)


During his Arizona rally, former President Donald Trump falsely accused Democrats of putting a "trigger warning" on the Constitution. He then went off on a rant against Democrats claiming they are the ones who destroy documents and "they plant documents," he continued.

"They plant documents. Let's see, is there a book on nuclear destruction or the building of nuclear weapon cheaply?" he said, sweating in the Arizona heat. "Let's put that box — let's put that in with Trump. Nah, they plant documents. They have a terrible reputation. Look at the kinda things — this is just the small part that I've read. And who would want to be with them? We're safer in that Chinese restaurant."

Immediately after stolen government documents were seized at Mar-a-Lago, Trump began claiming that documents were planted. When reports surfaced that there was nuclear information in there, Trump flew off the handle on his personal social media website. He categorically denied that he had such a document.

Trump then found a supportive judge in Florida that he went to, asking for the documents to be returned or to block the DOJ from an investigation. In their response to Trump's filing, the Justice Department showed a photo of the folders of the documents showing that they read "TOP SECRET" or "CLASSIFIED" as well as a slew of abbreviations under which their classification fell. One of those abbreviations was about nuclear programs under the Pentagon.

Former assistant director of counterintelligence at the FBI, Frank Figliuzzi, explained that among the folders were references to "special access programs" that were formerly under the Atomic Energy Act but moved to the Pentagon for defense.

"I'm not trying to be overly dramatic," Figliuzzi explained. "Even a discussion of the nature of special access programs becomes problematic. That's how sensitive they are. It's project-oriented. It could be long-term research that the government's doing on some incredibly sensitive technology. It could be the next iteration of a nuclear program or submarine. It could be a new weapons plan that's being worked on. It could be a new effort to insert people into a certain terrorist organization. We just don't know. But we know it's time sensitive. It's the most limited access you can get, and you get briefed in and out."

It was then that Trump began losing support among at least one Fox host.

During the rally, Trump also falsely said that the documents "are mine." In fact, every document created for government business by a government employee belongs to the government. Trump even went on to falsely characterize the documents as being "mine" under the Presidential Records Act. The exact opposite is the case, as the Presidential Records Act is why they do not belong to Trump.

Watch the video of Trump's rally in the video below or at the link here:

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-nuclear-bomb-book-planted/

 

The rats are starting to jump ship. It was all j8ust fun and games until the feds show up. And then the shit gets serious.

Trump lawyer told to certify Mar-a-Lago document search she did not conduct

Hugo Lowell in Washington
Mon, October 10, 2022 at 12:07 PM



Photograph: Jim Bourg/Reuters

Donald Trump’s lawyer Christina Bobb was instructed to certify to the justice department that all sensitive government documents stored at his Mar-a-Lago resort subpoenaed by a grand jury had been returned, though she had not herself conducted the search for the records.

The certification of subpoena compliance appears to be at the center of a criminal investigation into obstruction of justice surrounding the former US president after the assurance was proved to be untrue when the FBI’s search of the property turned up more than 100 more documents marked classified.


The saga around the Mar-a-Lago documents has become increasingly fraught in the courts as Trump has repeatedly claimed the FBI search and resultant investigation is politically motivated. Meanwhile, the justice department and Democrats have portrayed the taking of the documents as a potentially serious national security breach.

Bobb signed the certification as the “custodian of records” at the direction of another Trump lawyer, Evan Corcoran, and only later added caveats to make the declaration less ironclad since she had not conducted the search herself, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

The certification was drafted by Corcoran, who also searched Mar-a-Lago for documents demanded by the subpoena, and sent it to Bobb before the justice department’s counterintelligence chief, Jay Bratt, arrived on 3 June to collect a folder of responsive records, the sources said.

But unsure as to whether the subpoena had been fully complied with, Bobb told Corcoran to amend the certification to say that “based upon the information that has been provided to me” all documents responsive to the subpoena were being returned after a “diligent” search, the sources said.

It was not clear why Bobb was willing to sign the declaration – as required by the subpoena in lieu of testimony – as the “custodian of records” when she never fulfilled such a role, the sources said, and appeared to know there was risk in attesting to a search she had not completed.

And it was also not clear why Corcoran, who had been liaising with the justice department for weeks over government records at Mar-a-Lago, according to court filings, did not himself sign the certification – as well as whether he had asked for Bobb’s signature.

Bobb testified to the justice department about the 3 June episode on Friday, detailing Corcoran’s role and additional contacts with Trump’s in-house counsel Boris Epshteyn, one of the sources said. NBC News earlier reported Bobb’s testimony.

The circumstance surrounding the subpoena certification has become of special interest to the justice department as it conducts a criminal investigation into possible violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice and the retention of government records.

At issue for the obstruction line of inquiry, according to the partially redacted search warrant affidavit and recent court filings, is whether the letter signed by Bobb was wilful misrepresentation so Trump could hide other documents marked classified at Mar-a-Lago.

“Efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation,” federal prosecutors alleged in an August court filing.

But the previously unreported details behind the certification – and accepted as sufficient by the justice department on 3 June – could change the dynamics of the obstruction investigation and minimise Bobb’s potential legal exposure if she was misinformed, former justice department officials said.

The justice department appears to view Bobb and Corcoran as witnesses instead of potential defendants, even if that can change without warning: in a motion to the US appeals court for the 11th circuit, prosecutors wrote that Trump’s lawyers might be “witnesses to relevant events”.

Corcoran did not respond to requests for comment. Bobb and her criminal defense attorney also did not respond to requests for comment, though Bobb has told associates since the FBI’s search of the property on 8 August that the certification she signed was truthful, the sources said.

Bobb is considered as in-house counsel on Trump’s legal team, but was not involved in the Mar-a-Lago documents case in the run-up to the FBI search of the property in Florida and signed the certification as the “custodian of records” in name only, the sources said.

The distinction is important: in signing the statement as a custodian rather than as a lawyer, Bobb might not be subject to attorney-client privilege protections and thus could be able to speak more freely.



https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-lawyer-told-certify-mar-180701066.html

 

Ain't it sumpin?
The despicables are twirling and stamping over what trump's attorney was rumored to have signed/not signed. Evidence, they claim, of Trump hiding even more documents. Where, one has to ask, would those documents be hidden? Among Trump's medical records? No, the Feds got those. With his passports? No, they got those as well, except, oh yeah, they forgot to put them on the inventory, which, come to think of it, is kind of a bigger deal than the inference that trump's attorney has at least some ethical standards left and that proves ................................... something.

 

Legal experts explain how Trump lawyers are 'turning against each other' in DOJ document probe

Alex Henderson, AlterNet
October 11, 2022



Donald Trump at the Elysee Palace. (Frederic Legrand - COMEO / Shutterstock.com)


In June, according to Law & Crime, Christina Bobb — an attorney for former President Donald Trump — signed a letter stating that Trump had returned all government documents that had been subject to a grand jury subpoena in May. But when FBI agents executed a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach, Florida on Monday, August 8, the documents they confiscated reportedly included government documents — among them, according to the Washington Post, highly classified documents pertaining to nuclear weapons.

Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush of the New York Times reported, on September 16, that the letter Bobb signed in June was allegedly authored by another Trump attorney: Evan Corcoran. And NBC News reported that Bobb told U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys that Corcoran “drafted it and told her to sign it.”

In an article published on October 11, Law & Crime’s Colin Kalmbacher discusses Bobb, the June letter she signed, and legal reactions to it.

“Legal Twitter was abuzz over recent reports that one of former President Donald Trump’s attorneys recently spoke with federal prosecutors about various details regarding allegedly classified documents discovered at Mar-a-Lago during an August FBI raid,” Kalmbacher explains. “According to an NBC News report citing ‘three sources familiar with the matter,’ that attorney, Christina Bobb, a one-time talking head on the right-wing network One America News Network, ‘named two other Trump attorneys involved with the case’ during a recent talk with the U.S. Department of Justice…. There is no indication by the latest developments that Bobb is being threatened with prosecution to move higher up the ladder.”

A source told NBC News, “(Bobb) is not criminally liable. She is not going to be charged. She is not pointing fingers. She is simply a witness for the truth.”

On October 10, former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti tweeted, “Christina Bobb spoke to the Feds and told them that another Trump lawyer, Evan Corcoran, was the source of the false info in the certification she made regarding the Mar-a-Lago documents. If true, she is likely right that she has no liability. But now *he* is in the hot seat.”

Mariotti also tweeted, “Prosecutors will want to know why he directed Bobb to make a false statement to the DOJ and what the source of his false information was. (Potentially, that was Trump.) I expect Corcoran to refuse to be interviewed, claim he believed the info was true, and assert privilege.”

Just Security’s Ryan Goodman, a professor at New York University Law School, tweeted, on October 10, that “Trump lawyers” were “turning against each other.”

Andrew Weissmann, who worked closely with former Special Counsel Robert Mueller during the Russia investigation, also discussed Bobb and Corcoran on October 10, tweeting, “Bobb has passed the hot potato squarely to Corcoran to now tell DOJ how HE knew responsive docs had all been provided pursuant to the subpoena. It’s a crime to intentionally not comply with a subpoena.”



https://www.rawstory.com/legal-expe...ing-against-each-other-in-doj-document-probe/

 

DOJ: Trump's new SCOTUS petition regarding documents has 3 fatal flaws

Bob Brigham
October 11, 2022



President Donald Trump walks from the west wing of the White House to Marine One in 2017. (Shutterstock.com)


The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday filled a 34-page response before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday in the case of Donald J. Trump vs. United States of America.

Trump filed the lawsuit after the conservative 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on an order from controversial Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon.

The DOJ began it's filing by noting all the points Trump did not challenge.

The filing listed three major flaws in Trump's emergency appeal.

RELATED: Legal experts: Russia link to Trump documents means it's a matter of 'when, not if' he is indicted

First, DOJ argued that the Supreme Court would be unlikely to grant review if the 11th Circuit ultimately reverses Cannon's order.

Second, DOJ argued that Trump did not prove the 11th Circuit erred in its partial stay of Cannon's ruling.

Finally, DOJ argued that Trump will not suffer irreparable harm from the stay.

The filing was submitted by Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-doj-scotus/

 

The above story is filled with innuendo and speculation based on anonymous sourcing. One has to wonder, how does anyone outside the investigation know any/all of this?

A story written like this reminds one of how "Pencil Neck" Adam Schiff worked. He's the Democrat congressman from California who continued to leak his lies about the Russia Collusion hoax, all breathlessly reported by the same media doing it now, right up until the actual documents were finally released. Then he was exposed as the congenital liar he is.

And of course, stories like this (not labeled opinion, but which purport to be factual reporting) continue to feed into the insatiable need of those easily duped anti-freedom fascists who want to feel they're in the know about the secret inner workings of a closed committee.

 

Well, but see, @Scotchlass what this really exposes is the increasing desperation of the left. They know what's coming in less than a month and they know they can't stop it. Karma is a bitch and she's coming for despicables.


We can expect to see all manner of propaganda about Trump, Gaetz, DeSantis, immigration, inflation and all the rest between now and November. Did you see? Biden even blames the immigration mess on Trump now.
Expect that to be a topic for the day, courtesy of he despicable copy N paste machine.

 

Has anyone allegedly said three sources close to Trump have claimed Trump did not take classified documents from the White House and no classified documents were at Mar Lago?

Instead of bitching about the legal system and how it applies to everyone, it would help Trump if just one person would stand up for the man and say, "Leave Trump alone! He's an innocent man and he's done nothing wrong." Imagine how it would cheer Trump to hear the 45 people who attend his next rally chanting, "Leave Trump alone!"

Instead, all Trump has on his side is people bitching that law enforcement should not enforce the law. They just assume Trump is guilty and go straight to "Trump is above the law" It never occurred to them that Trump could go into court and be found not guilty because there is a reasonable doubt. Maybe the chant should be "Give Trump a chance!"

 

This is check. The one thing Trump and his legal have tried the hardest not to do was put any of his claims of attorney and/or executive privilege in writing to a court. Because they all know they are baseless and will not stand up. While in the meantime the DOJ is sitting there with their own spread sheet to demolish any claim they might come up with. And that game now has a time limit on it.

Trump Has 21 Days to Decide What Mar-a-Lago Records to Fight

Zoe Tillman
Thu, October 13, 2022 at 7:38 AM



(Bloomberg) -- The Justice Department said Wednesday that it has turned over the bulk of documents seized from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to the former president’s legal team, starting a 21-day clock for Trump to decide -- and officially declare -- precisely which records he wants off-limits in a criminal probe.

Trump’s legal team will have the next three weeks to go through the thousands of pages of documents and produce a spreadsheet detailing claims they want to press for why the government shouldn’t be allowed to use specific materials in its investigation. Those could include claims of attorney-client privilege or executive privilege, or that certain presidential records should be considered “personal” under federal law.

The Justice Department has disputed that Trump, as a former president, could claim executive privilege or successfully argue that government records he hadn’t turned over to the National Archives after leaving office were “personal” under the Presidential Records Act. The government has also argued that a special filter team already did a sweep for any legal documents that might be protected.

The court-appointed special master tasked with overseeing this process, US District Senior Judge Raymond Dearie, also received the documents from the Justice Department this week, according to the notice.


Dearie is already looking at Trump’s claims of attorney-client and attorney work-product privilege over several documents that a government filter team originally flagged during the search.

The Justice Department’s updated inventory of what was seized from Mar-a-Lago listed more than 13,000 government records -- including some bearing classified markings -- news clippings, books, articles of clothing, and empty folders; the overwhelming majority of seized items were documents, the log shows.

Not included in what the government has shown to Trump’s lawyers and Dearie are approximately 103 documents that the Justice Department said feature classified markings. Trump has asked the US Supreme Court to revive the special master’s authority to look at those documents.

Trump’s lawyers had said in an earlier court filing that they’d been told by government lawyers that the seized records totaled more than 200,000 pages. A spreadsheet filed in court on Wednesday by the Justice Department indicated a smaller page count, noting 21,792 “Bates” stamped pages across the 33 boxes and other document collections.

Trump’s legal team grew this week as they begin to dig into the documents. On Wednesday, two more attorneys entered appearances, Jesus Suarez and Lazaro Fields, both partners at the law firm Continental PLLC in Coral Gables, Florida. One of Trump’s lead attorneys in the case, Christopher Kise, recently joined Continental, deepening the firm’s conservative connections and ties to top political figures in Florida, including Governor Ron DeSantis.

Once Trump’s challenge list is complete, his lawyers and the Justice Department will have another 10 days to figure out where they disagree. Dearie will go through those disputes and make recommendations to US District Judge Aileen Cannon about who should prevail. His deadline to finish is Dec. 16. Cannon will then decide whether to accept Dearie’s findings and enter a final order.

This week’s production kicks off the core component of Dearie’s work. The veteran Brooklyn-based judge had originally suggested having Trump go through the documents in smaller batches and identify areas of disagreement with the government on a rolling basis. Cannon rejected that approach in her scheduling order, instead asking for a “comprehensive” report from Trump’s lawyers 21 days after the government formally notified the court that it had turned over all of the documents.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-21-days-decide-mar-004313056.html

 

DOJ reveals it has additional evidence against Trump that has not been presented in court filings

Bob Brigham
October 14, 2022



Donald Trump at at Trump International in New Jersey (Shutterstock)


The Department of Justice has additional evidence against Donald Trump that it has not publicly revealed, according to a new court filing.

On Friday, the DOJ officially appealed Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon's controversial appointment of Special Master Raymond Dearie to oversee the documents the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago. The document was filed with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

"In a 53-page brief before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, the Justice Department broadly challenged the legal legitimacy of orders last month by Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who blocked investigators from using the materials and appointed an independent arbiter to sift them for any that are potentially privileged or Mr. Trump’s personal property," The New York Times reported. "The Justice Department already succeeded in persuading a panel of the Atlanta-based court to exempt about 100 documents marked classified from Judge Cannon’s move — a decision the Supreme Court declined to overturn this week."

IN OTHER NEWS: Paul Ryan ruffles MAGA feathers with brutal 2024 prediction

In a footnote on page six of the appeal, DOJ explained it has additional evidence that Trump had classified documents at his Florida resort.

"Here and before the district court, the government has referred to evidence developed in its investigation to inform the courts of the relevant facts," DOJ wrote. "Where possible, the government refers to portions of the affidavit accompanying its search warrant application that have been unsealed or to other information in the public record."

"Of necessity, however, the government cannot publicly disclose all the sources of its evidence, particularly while the investigation remains ongoing," DOJ noted.





DOJ appeal / screenshot




https://www.rawstory.com/doj-special-master-appeal/

 

Of course they do.
No political games going on here at all.