DOJ wants to see more security video from Mar-a-Lago after FBI search: report

Sky Palma
August 23, 2022



Photo: Nicole Glass Photography/Shutterstock


The Department of Justice has subpoenaed more security video from Mar-a-Lago in a sign that "officials are not certain whether they have recovered all the presidential records," The New York Times reported Monday evening.

Unnamed sources told the publication that officials are seeking additional footage in the wake of the FBI's August 8 raid on Donald Trump's Palm Beach resort, signaling that the agency is still scrutinizing the manner in which Trump allegedly took the documents from the White House at the end of his tenure.

Trump claims that he had the right to take the documents and that he declassified them while still in office -- a suggestion that has been dismissed by former White House officials as untrue.

According to the New York Times, over 300 documents were taken by Trump from the White House to Mar-a-Lago.

IN OTHER NEWS: There's 'great irony' to Trump being probed for stashing top-secret docs: Former DOJ counterintel chief

FBI agents seized documents marked "Top Secret," "Secret" and "Confidential" during the search of Trump's palatial residence.

The search warrant for the raid, which was personally approved by Attorney General Merrick Garland, directed the FBI to seize documents and records "illegally possessed" in violation of three criminal statutes, including one falling under the Espionage Act, which makes it a crime to illegally obtain or retain national security information.

Trump vehemently denounced the FBI raid on his home as a "witch hunt" and claimed that all of the material confiscated during the search had been previously "declassified."

Trump is also facing legal scrutiny for his efforts to overturn the results of the November 2020 election and the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.

https://www.rawstory.com/mar-a-lago-security-video/

 

Because Trump thinks he is still president he thinks he has the right to have access to top secret documents. What a chump Trump is.

 

I have not followed all the details, but I want them to get Trump really good and hard.

 

'The lawyers or Donald Trump is going down': Legal expert says he feels 'the noose tightening'

Sarah K. Burris
August 22, 2022



Photos: Shutterstock


Speaking to MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell on Monday evening, legal analysts Andrew Weissman and Brad Moss walked through how Donald Trump made his legal problems even worse with his latest court filing.

Weissmann, who previously served as the counsel for the FBI and under Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation, explained that the two stories in the Times and the court filing pair well together because they both link Trump to responsibility. The court documents name Trump as providing the requested documents multiple times when asked before the search was executed.

First, Trump was asked for them by the National Archives, holding back several boxes after personally going through them, according to the New York Times. By May 11, 2022, the Justice Department had subpoenaed Trump for the documents he didn't turn over. A month later, he replied, saying he would give them back. So, he turned over some of them, but still not all of them. That's why the FBI was forced to use a search warrant to obtain what Trump refused to turn over.

What the Times also revealed in its report is that the former president was keeping some of the documents hidden in his own closet in his personal office.

"You know, I read the story, and I just felt the noose tightening around his neck," Weissmann said of Trump and the Times report. "But I think there's another shoe to drop here, just to mix a lot of metaphors, which is with the filing today that Donald Trump made, he is opening the door wide for the Justice Department to respond. The attorney general has famously said we only speak through court filings. Well, this is going to allow the attorney general to respond to all the false statements that are in that filing and to fill in some of the timelines and corroborate or not The New York Times story because they know all of the facts and all of the truth and can easily dispel it. But they now have a perfect vehicle for doing that."

He went on to say that he anticipates the Trump filing is possibly going to reveal some of the methodologies behind the Justice Department's affidavit that they don't want to be public. A response to Trump's filing from the DOJ could ultimately give the details around the efforts to try and get the documents back over the past eight months.

O'Donnell noted that Trump lawyer Christina Bobb may have implicated herself as having lied to the court under oath in an affidavit she signed saying that Trump handed everything over.

Moss explained this puts her and Trump in a "whole lot of trouble." He also joked that the real abbreviation for MAGA is "Make Attorneys Get Attorneys." He told Bobb that she should be hiring a lawyer as soon as possible. The next step for the DOJ and FBI is to watch the CCTV tapes to see if Bobb knew that there were more documents and if she lied knowingly or lied because her client lied to her.


Renato Mariotti

@renato_mariotti
·
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Christina Bobb is reportedly the attorney who signed a statement to DOJ indicating that, to the best of her knowledge, all the classified material stored at Mar-a-Lago had been returned. If she knowingly lied, that was a crime. She needs her own lawyer.



nytimes.com
Trump Had More Than 300 Classified Documents at Mar-a-Lago
The National Archives found more than 150 sensitive documents when it got a first batch of material from the former president in January, helping to explain the Justice Department’s urgent response.
7:06 PM · Aug 22, 2022


Weissmann noted that it's highly suspicious that his other lawyer, Evan Corcoran, let Bobb sign the affidavit and that he didn't.

"But he is in just as much trouble under aiding and abetting if he knew it was false," he explained. "And she was going to sign it. Look, it is going to be a situation where it is either the lawyers or Donald Trump is going down, based on that statement. And the lawyers presumably are going to say, hey, I thought it was true because that is what my client told me. The client being Donald Trump."

He explained that is what happened in the Paul Manafort case under special counsel Robert Mueller.

"He told his lawyers to say something and made representations about what they should convey to the Department of Justice," recalled Weissmann. "And we got a court order from the Chief Judge in D.C. saying about that lawyer. There is no attorney-client privilege there. The lawyer can reveal exactly who they learn the information from. And Paul Manafort was charged with lying to the government because he caused those statements to be made. Exactly the same play can be made and the case law is very strong on that issue. And look, the lawyers have to make a choice. Is it them or is that the client? I would actually suspect that it is the client. I think the lawyers would be incredibly foolhardy to sign something that they knew was false."




emptywheel

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Aug 22, 2022
@emptywheel
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Replying to @emptywheel
He's citing a terrorist's lawyer who was ultimately convicted of conspiring with that terrorist. Take from that what you will...








emptywheel

@emptywheel
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Here, Trump accuses his own lawyer, Christina Bobb, who is referred to in this filing by reference, of incompetence.



4:11 PM · Aug 22, 2022





https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-going-down-legal-expert/

 

Biden signed off on FBI review of Trump records, National Archives letter reveals
Under federal law, the Justice Department cannot make decisions about executive privilege; the sitting president decides.
The Biden White House, at the request of the Justice Department, signed off to have the FBI and the intelligence community examine hundreds of pages of classified documents former President Trump turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), a newly-surfaced government letter reveals.

Debra Wall, NARA's acting head, penned a letter to Trump attorney Evan Corcoran May 10 revealing federal officials had been negotiating for months with the Trump team over whether federal law enforcement and intelligence officials should be allowed to conduct a national security review or whether the material should be shielded under Trump’s purported assertion of executive privilege.

The letter, posted Tuesday on the NARA website, indicates the Biden administration did not believe a former president could assert executive privilege over material that, by law, had to be turned over to NARA.

"NARA identified items marked as classified national security information, up to the level of Top Secret and including Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Program materials," Wall wrote in the letter.
"NARA informed the Department of Justice about that discovery, which prompted the Department to ask the President to request that NARA provide the FBI with access to the boxes at issue so that the FBI and others in the Intelligence Community could examine them."

Wall indicated the archive’s initial review of 15 boxes handed over by Trump in January 2022 included more than 100 classified documents totaling more than 700 pages and included some documents labeled "Sensitive Compartmented Information" and some labeled "Special Access Program," which only a limited number of people are authorized to view in a secure facility.

Wall said she then sought guidance from the White House and Justice Department on how to proceed.

"The Counsel to the President has informed me that, in light of the particular circumstances presented here, President Biden defers to my determination, in consultation with the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, regarding whether or not I should uphold the former President’s purported ‘protective assertion of executive privilege,'" Wall wrote.

On April 11, Wall said "the White House Counsel's Office — affirming a request from the Department of Justice supported by an FBI letterhead memorandum — formally transmitted a request that NARA provide the FBI access to the 15 boxes for its review within seven days, with the possibility that the FBI might request copies of specific documents following its review of the boxes."
The May 10 letter from NARA also indicates ongoing discussions between NARA and Biden's White House Counsel’s office over Trump’s assertion of "executive privilege" over some documents.

Wall ultimately handed over the material to the intelligence community.

"Accordingly, NARA will provide the FBI access to the records in question, as requested by the incumbent President, beginning as early as Thursday, May 12, 2022," Wall wrote, about four months after Trump handed over the records to NARA.

Administration officials privately defend the document review process, saying the Justice Department, by law, cannot make unilateral decisions about executive privilege, and that, ultimately, the sitting president decides. Those officials said Biden’s decision to defer to NARA and the DOJ was fully consistent with his executive authority.
"The question in this case is not a close one," Wall wrote. "The Executive Branch here is seeking access to records belonging to, and in the custody of, the Federal Government itself, not only in order to investigate whether those records were handled in an unlawful manner but also, as the National Security Division explained, to ‘conduct an assessment of the potential damage resulting from the apparent manner in which these materials were stored and transported and take any necessary remedial steps.’".
Fox News reported earlier this month that a face-to-face meeting June 3 at Mar-a-Lago between Jay Bratt, the chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section in the Justice Department’s National Security Division; three FBI agents; and Trump's legal team, revealed that more classified documents were potentially being stored at the former president's private residence.

Sources say about 150 more classified documents were seized from Mar-A-Lago, adding to the more than 100 documents turned over in January.

Fox News first reported last week that FBI agents seized boxes containing records covered by attorney-client privilege and potentially executive privilege during the raid.
Trump has said he had been cooperative and negotiating in good faith with NARA about the requested presidential material and again on Monday slammed the FBI search as "unnecessary, unwarranted, and un-American."

Trump and his legal team filed a motion Monday evening seeking an independent review of the records seized by the FBI during its "unprecedented" and "unnecessary" raid, saying the decision to search his private residence just months before the 2022 midterm elections "involved political calculations aimed at diminishing the leading voice in the Republican Party, President Trump."
According to the motion filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Trump and his legal team are seeking an order to appoint a special master to review the records obtained during the search; to block the further review of seized materials by the government until a special master is appointed; to require the Justice Department to provide a more detailed receipt for property and to require the government to return any item seized that was not within the scope of the search warrant.

 

But this isn't political is it?
Nope. Not a bit.

 

No the letter actually proves it was not political at all.


A Trump ally produced an unpublished letter meant to help him. It actually spells out even graver concerns over documents at Mar-a-Lago.
Tom Porter
Tue, August 23, 2022 at 9:06 AM·3 min read


In this article:

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  Donald Trump
  45th President of the United States

• 
  Joe Biden
  President of the United States since 2021

The Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla.; former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally on Aug. 5, 2022, in Waukesha, Wis.Wilfredo Lee/AP, left; Morry Gash/AP, right.

• 
  A conservative journalist posted a letter online between the NARA and a Donald Trump lawyer.
  
  
• The journalist pointed to the arms-length involvement of President Joe Biden.
  
  
• It also showed the extent of classified information Trump took with him on leaving office.
  

An ally of former President Donald Trump triumphantly published a letter to Trump about his storage of government secrets at Mar-a-Lago on Monday.

John Solomon, a conservative journalist with links to Trump, highlighted the letter for showing the arms-length involvement of President Joe Biden in the investigation that later led to the raid at Trump's home.

But the document also revealed the previously-unknown scale of secret information contained in documents there, and how damaging officials thought it was to national security.

Legal experts were quick to say this was the more serious revelation, and that Solomon's publication of the letter backfired.

The May 10 letter was from the National Archivist, a senior official at the agency that handles presidential records. Solomon was one of Trump's authorized liaisons to the National Archives.

It was addressed from National Archivist Debra Wall to Trump's attorney, Evan Corcoran, and discussed 15 boxes of materials Trump's handed over in January, which it says contained 700 pages of classified material.

"In its initial review of materials within those boxes, NARA identified items marked as classified national security information, up to the level of Top Secret and including Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Program materials," Wall wrote.

These are three of the highest levels of classification. It prompted an internal assessment of "of the potential damage resulting from the apparent manner in which these materials were stored and transported," Wall said.

Trump has consistently downplayed the danger of him keeping such documents at Mar-a-Lago, while US officials have said that is was a key rationale for getting them back.

Also discussed in the letter was whether the FBI was even allowed to access the documents, since Trump's legal team asserted they were covered by executive privilege — a legal concept shielding some records from scrutiny.

Wall said she needed to ask Biden to make a call on whether the FBI could access the files; a call he delegated to her and to the DOJ. They decided the FBI could read them, the letter said.

Solomon presented the information as proof that "Biden White House was involved" at the start of the probe, but skirted over the details of the classified information.

Bradley P. Moss, a national security attorney, said that publication of the letter had backfired.

"Does @jsolomonReports realize how bad that letter is for Trump?" he asked.

"Trump not only had classified records at Mar-a-Lago, not only had TS/SCI classified records, he had Special Access Program classified information. Those are our most sensitive secrets. They were sitting in a damn basement."

University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck described the release "as both a self-inflicted wound and further proof of how the government has been playing by the rules."

The letter is about a separate trove of documents to those recovered in the August 8 raid on Mar-a-Lago, which stayed in Trump's hands months longer and, per legal documents after the search, also included highly classified material.

Read the original article on Business Insider

https://news.yahoo.com/


https://news.yahoo.com/trump-ally-produced-unpublished-letter-150601344.html

 

Stumbler, your own post detailed the thought process of biden administration officials that clearly showed it was political considerations for the trump raid.
Your post did not list a single legal point to explain the Mar a Lago raid.

And bidens involvement was not "arms length".
Fail.

 

You mean other than Trump stole classified documents?

It is completely laughable that you still can't acknowledge that he had this things and in doing so he broke the law.

 

Didja' ever go to a "Trekkie convention, look around, scratch your head and ask yourself, "They can't believe this stuff. ...Can they?"

 

And so, anon, you're back to answering for Stumbler?
Really. What does the job pay, anyway?

But you probably need to get down from your high moral ground for a bit, cause as it turns out, Trump really didn't "steal classified documents".
And the truly funny part is, the District Court in DC, with a liberal judge appointed by Obama making the ruling on a Clinton presidential documents case, says so.
Now you gotta admit, that is fucking funny, eh?

 

Really? Then how did all those government documents end up at Mar-a-lago?

And I would ask you about this Clinton reference, but I know you'll just dance around it and not really show anything, so meh...

 

Well, first, according to the court case cited below, if President Trump waved his magic presidential wand over the documents, they weren't government documents at all, they were personal records.
Really.
Says so right there in the court case.
And second, since Shooter has already given the citation at issue several times your personal attack is unjustified.
No matter. Here ya go. Again.​

 

LOL! Comparing classified documents to Clinton's tapes? A case that Judicial Watch lost? Those tapes were deemed personal property.

There is no spin possible that could turn top secret documents into personal documents.

But hey, maybe it's time to clean your guns and get your ammo ready! You guys keep telling us civil war is coming!

Get along little space alien!

 

No this is a lie and you know it. President Biden's involvement amounted to the National Archives asking him if he was going to invoke executive privilege over the documents Trump stole. And President Biden told the National Archives that was up to them. Trump was defying the National Archives and telling them the FBI and intelligence community could not even look at the classified documents he stole,. But since that included more than 700 pages of classified documents including documents marked TS/SCI classified records, and Special Access Program material the National Archives said they would not recognize his claims of executive privilege and handed them over to the FBI. President Biden and the White House were hands off which is why they didn't even know the FBI was going to search Mar a Lago until Trump told the world it was happening.

Let's see you answer a simple question @shootersa. Are you saying Trump should not have to comply with the Presidential Records Act as all other presidents going back to Nixon have been required to do?

That is a very simple question so why don't you answer it.

 

Trump appears to concede he illegally retained official documents

• 
  

Hugo Lowell in Washington
Wed, August 24, 2022 at 12:00 AM·4 min read






Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

Donald Trump appeared to concede in his court filing surrounding the seizure of materials from his Florida resort that he unlawfully retained official government documents, as the former president argued that some of the documents collected by the FBI could be subject to executive privilege.

The motion submitted on Monday by the former president’s lawyers argued that a court should appoint a so-called special master to separate out and determine what materials the justice department can review as evidence due to privilege issues.

But the argument from Trump that some of the documents are subject to executive privilege protections indicates that those documents are official records that he is not authorized to keep and should have turned over to the National Archives at the end of the administration.


Related: ‘Donald kept our secret’: Mar-a-Lago stay saved Giuliani from drink and depression, book says

The motion, in that regard, appeared to concede that Trump violated one of the criminal statutes listed on the warrant used by the FBI to search the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort – 18 USC 2071 – concerning the unlawful removal of government records.

“If he’s acknowledging that he’s in possession of documents that would have any colorable claim of executive privilege, those are by definition presidential records and belong at the National Archives,” said Asha Rangappa, a former FBI agent and former associate dean at Yale Law School.

“And so it’s not clear that executive privilege would even be relevant to the particular crime he’s being investigated for and yet in this filing, he basically admits that he is in possession of them, which is what the government is trying to establish,” Rangappa said.

Trump remains able to make the case that a special master should be appointed to review the seized documents, seek a more detailed receipt for what the FBI retrieved from Mar-a-Lago and restrain the justice department from further reviewing the materials until the process is complete.

The reasoning, former US attorneys say, is that there could be communications seized by the FBI that are privileged, but not used in furtherance of a crime, and even if the justice department wanted to use them in its investigation, it should be precluded from doing so.

A person directly involved in Trump’s legal defense noted – repeating parts in the filing – that the Presidential Records Act had no enforcement mechanism, even as they conceded that the justice department might pursue the privilege argument as a tacit admission.

But Trump’s motion could throw up additional challenges for the former president, with additional passages in the filing laying out a months-long battle by the justice department to recover certain records in a pattern of interactions that could be construed as obstruction of justice.

The search warrant for Mar-a-Lago listed obstruction for the statutes potentially violated, though it was not clear whether that was obstruction of the investigation into the very retrieval of government documents from Mar-a-Lago or for another, separate investigation.

Yet the section in Trump’s motion titled “President Donald J Trump’s Voluntary Assistance” detailed the multiple steps the justice department took to initially retrieve 15 boxes in January, additional materials in June, and then 26 boxes when the FBI conducted its search.

The filing discussed how Trump returned the 15 boxes to the National Archives, and then – one day after the National Archives told Trump’s lawyers that those boxes contained classified documents – “accepted service of a grand jury subpoena” for additional documents with classification markings.

But despite taking custody of documents responsive to the subpoena, the justice department learned there may have been additional documents marked as classified, and issued a subpoena on 22 June demanding security camera footage of the hallway outside where the materials were being stored.

That subpoena for security tapes, as well as a subsequent subpoena for CCTV footage of that area from just before the FBI search on 8 August, suggests the justice department did not think Trump was being entirely truthful or forthcoming in his interactions with the investigation.

Those suspicions were well-founded: when the government retrieved materials from Mar-a-Lago on that second collection in June, Trump’s custodian of records attested they had given back documents responsive to the subpoena – only for the FBI to retrieve more boxes of classified materials.

Separately, apart from late filing of the motion two weeks after the FBI search took place, the brief itself appears to be procedurally problematic.

The motion was not filed in West Palm Beach, Florida, where the warrant was approved. Instead, it was filed in Fort Pierce, where the judge has no knowledge of the underlying affidavit – and could rule in such a way to reveal to Trump if he or his lawyers are suspects for obstruction.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-appears-concede-illegally-retained-060028608.html

 

Now that, that's some PHD (Piled Higher and Deeper) level spin right there.

 

DOJ says it can't trust Trump's lawyers: report

Niko Mann
August 24, 2022



Donald Trump addresses crowd in Sioux City, Iowa in 2016. (Shutterstock.com)


The Department of Justice says it can't trust Donald Trump's lawyers due to the former president's frequent mind changes, according to The New York Times.

The New York Times report also noted that DOJ officials don't believe Trump's lawyers could speak with any authority for the former president because he often withholds information from his own representation.

"Justice Department officials, who have maintained an open channel with Mr. Trump’s representatives, have said they operate under the assumption that none of his attorneys can speak with authority for the former president, knowing he is liable to change his mind in a moment, or withhold information from his own representatives," said the report.

Trump appointee Judge Aileen M. Cannon asked Trump's lawyers on Tuesday if she had the jurisdiction to hear Trump's request to appoint a special master about the seized documents from Mar-a-Lago. She also informed them that they messed up the paperwork. “A sample motion can be found on the Court’s website,” she said.



Former White House special counsel Ty Cobb told Business Insider that it's hard to tell if Trump is following his lawyers' advice or if they are following his. "As time has gone by, he's gotten farther and farther ahead of his lawyers, to the point where it's hard to tell if they're following his advice or if he's following theirs," said Cobb.

The judge gave Trump's lawyers until Friday to respond.



https://www.rawstory.com/trump-lawyers-2657930785/

 

I guess the feelings are mutual since hardly any one trusts the FBI, DOJ, CIA, HHS,...I'd continue but I'm sure you get the point....

 

Trump's 'Mar-a-Lago offensive backfires' as new disclosures point to 'serious breach': National Review writer

Brad Reed
August 25, 2022



President Donald Trump (image via Nicholas Kamm/AFP).


National Review writer Andrew McCarthy has been skeptical of the FBI's search of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, but new disclosures made this week by pro-Trump writer John Solomon have left him far less doubtful about the merits of the search than before.

In a new analysis published by National Review titled "Trump World's Mar-a-Lago Search Offense Backfires," McCarthy argues that Trump has done himself no favors by trying to depict the search of his home as a politically driven raid by an out-of-control gestapo aimed at bringing him down at any cost.

This has been compounded, McCarthy believes, by Solomon's release of a letter from acting archivist Debra Steidel Wall to Trump's lawyers that outlined how he had not complied with the National Archives' repeated requests to return documents.

"Clearly, the purport of Solomon’s news report was to bolster the Trump narrative that Biden is using the Justice Department as a political weapon in hopes of eliminating Trump as his potential 2024 opponent," writes McCarthy. "Okay . . . but the problem is that Archivist Wall’s letter shreds Trump’s claim — most recently proclaimed in a lawsuit filed with great fanfare on Monday morning — that he has been completely cooperative and transparent in dealing with the FBI and the Justice Department, and therefore that the forcible search of his Florida estate was an unnecessary, inexplicable abuse of power."

READ MORE: Data hack reveals right-wing Liberty Counsel pushed Trump in apparent violation of IRS rules

And if it's true that Trump kept documents marked "top secret" that related to special access programs, McCarthy charges, then it would mark "an extraordinarily serious breach" in national security protocols.

He closes his analysis by warning Trump that he could really face criminal charges if he keeps going down his current path.

"If you are trying not to get indicted, the best defense is usually not a good offense," he concludes. "And it is never an offense that backfires."

Read the full analysis here.



https://www.rawstory.com/trump-documents-mar-a-lago-2657940932/