More pundit propaganda.
The despicable desperation is starting to smell .................................. ripe.

 

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Former prosecutors mock Trump's attorneys and say they may need to hire their own lawyers amid continued Mar-a-Lago fallout
Sonam Sheth,Camila DeChalus,C. Ryan Barber
Tue, August 23, 2022 at 12:17 PM·8 min read




Former President Donald Trump on August 6 in Dallas.Brandon Bell/Getty Images

• Legal experts panned Trump's lawyers as they grappled with the fallout from the Mar-a-Lago raid.
  
  
• One former prosecutor said they're "either completely incompetent or out of their depth."
  
  
• Experts also called the Trump team's latest lawsuit a "crazy document" and a PR stunt.
  

Legal experts and former prosecutors are panning former President Donald Trump's team of lawyers as it continues grappling with the fallout from the FBI's unprecedented Mar-a-Lago raid.

"They appear to be either completely incompetent or out of their depth," Renato Mariotti, a former longtime federal prosecutor, told Insider. "That's part of the reason why the former president has trouble finding lawyers: Because he demands that they file documents and take positions that have no legal support whatsoever."

This week's mockery of Trump's legal team came after it filed a lawsuit Monday requesting the appointment of a special master to sift out potentially privileged materials seized in the Mar-a-Lago search earlier this month.

The raid came after months of back-and-forth between Trump's lawyers and Justice Department officials trying to recover boxes of government documents, some highly classified, that were improperly moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago after Trump left office.

According to the FBI's search warrant authorizing the raid, investigators are examining whether Trump violated three federal laws, including the Espionage Act, by moving and then refusing to return the records to the National Archives and Records Administration.

One attorney familiar with the Trump team's thought process expressed skepticism that the former president's lawyers were equipped to handle a case like this, adding that Trump's main focus appeared to be on waging a public-relations war against the Justice Department.

"He's a big believer of the public-relations assault, which I've never seen work," the lawyer told Insider. "It says to me that they want to kill the messenger, which speaks to consciousness of guilt instead of dealing with the facts."

They added: "I don't see anybody with the experience it takes to represent a former president in a case like this. There's a lot at stake here. He's always playing it right up against the wind, and he's a high-risk guy."

Trump's legal team includes Christina Bobb, a former host on the right-wing channel One America News Network; Lindsey Halligan, a Florida insurance lawyer; Alina Habba, who was once the general counsel for a parking-garage firm; and Evan Corcoran and James Trusty, both of whom are former federal prosecutors.

"He would be a very difficult client to manage," Shanlon Wu, a former federal prosecutor, told Insider of Trump. "Seems like he doesn't like to pay attention to what the lawyers are telling them to do, and no lawyer likes to be in that situation because you can't really control the strategy of the case."

Ty Cobb, who worked as the White House's special counsel during the Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, echoed that view.

"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," Cobb told Insider.

Then there's the reputational damage attorneys could suffer after working for Trump.

Alan Dershowitz, the conservative lawyer who defended Trump in his second impeachment trial, told Insider in a previous interview that his speaking engagements were canceled after the trial.

Mariotti also alluded to that risk, saying: "If you represent the former president, you may lose your other clients." He added that some lawyers may also be reluctant to work for Trump because of concerns that "he would ask you or try to force you to do things that are unethical or highly problematic."


Mar-a-Lago one day after the FBI raid.Kimberly Leonard/Insider
'A long ranting tweet dressed up as a legal filing'
Within minutes of Trump's lawsuit being filed Monday evening, legal scholars began picking it apart.

"The more I read Trump's motion, the more I am completely confused and shocked he got three lawyers to risk their law licenses by filing this thing," the national security lawyer Bradley Moss tweeted.

To some Justice Department veterans, the lawsuit read more like a press release in which Trump aired claims — long anticipated in the event of heightened scrutiny from the Justice Department — that the search was politically motivated.

Twice in the filing, Trump's lawyers referred to the former president as the "clear frontrunner" in the 2024 Republican primary "should he decide to run."

Barb McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor and former US attorney in Detroit, characterized the lawsuit as "a long ranting tweet dressed up as a legal filing."

"Everyone's entitled to counsel, but lawyers who sign their names to a brief must first remove frivolous arguments and unsupported claims," McQuade said on Twitter. "This one has loads."

Andrew Weissmann, a former FBI general counsel who later worked on Mueller's team, told MSNBC that the lawsuit was a "crazy document" that "in so many ways is incriminating of the former president."

The filing also "opens a wide door for DOJ to walk through," Weissmann tweeted. "AG Garland can now 'speak in its filings' and address all the factual lies and misrepresentations."

The lawsuit also appears to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of how executive privilege works. Typically, it's invoked when the legislative branch is demanding information from the executive branch. In this case, the Mar-a-Lago search was carried out by the FBI, which itself falls under the executive branch, raising questions about whether Trump can reasonably assert privilege.

"At its core Trump's court filing is Alice in Wonderland as a legal argument," Ryan Goodman, a professor at New York University School of Law and a founding editor of Just Security, tweeted. "It's central demand is for a special master to filter out all the documents for which there is executive privilege. But those are the very kinds of documents that belong in the National Archives."

David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor from the Southern District of Florida, told Insider the lawsuit read to him "like a preemptive, premature motion to suppress" and that the issues it touched on would normally be raised after the filing of formal charges, which hasn't occurred in this case.

A special master is also generally appointed when there are specific and factually supported allegations of a privilege intrusion. In the lawsuit, however, Weinstein said Trump's lawyers appeared to make "conclusory statements and submit their own set of facts that are not supported by an affidavit or other sworn statement."

"Much of what they allege can easily be rebutted by the government, to the extent that they are willing to do at this time," he added.

Trump's team also said in the lawsuit that the warrant the FBI obtained for the Mar-a-Lago search was overly broad and violated the Fourth Amendment because it authorized the seizure of "any government and/or Presidential Records created" during the Trump administration.

But Orin Kerr, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, said: "In cases involving searches for documents, it's the norm for the government not to know the exact form of every document they're looking for."

Trump's lawyers may need to lawyer up
Former prosecutors said Trump's attorneys may need to lawyer up themselves in light of a recent New York Times story that said Trump retained boxes containing classified documents at Mar-a-Lago even after the Justice Department subpoenaed the materials. The Times reported Trump "went through the boxes himself in late 2021" and turned over 15 boxes to the National Archives in January.

The Justice Department later launched an investigation into Trump's handling of national security information and determined he likely had additional documents at Mar-a-Lago that needed to be recovered. It issued a grand-jury subpoena for the records in May, and in June, a top counterintelligence official at the Justice Department went to Mar-a-Lago to collect the boxes.

Corcoran, one of Trump's attorneys, then drafted a statement, signed by Bobb, saying that to the best of Bobb's knowledge, all remaining classified material at Mar-a-Lago had been returned.

As it turned out, that wasn't the case. The FBI recovered 26 boxes of records when it searched Trump's Florida residence earlier this month, including 11 sets of material marked classified or top secret.

It's unclear whether Bobb knew Trump was still in possession of scores of government records when she signed the June letter, and legal experts said she may need to hire her own lawyer in the wake of The Times' story.

"Both of them have a problem at this point because they'll have to be interviewed about the documents that were still there," Wu, the former federal prosecutor, told Insider. "They're in a very bad position."

"As Melissa Murray says, MAGA also means Making Attorneys Get Attorneys," Weissmann tweeted.

Corcoran and Bobb did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Read the original article on Business Insider


https://www.yahoo.com/news/former-prosecutors-mock-trumps-attorneys-181750543.html

 

Recently there were a flurry of stories, most of them based on anonymous sources, about Trump not being able to get any good lawyers to defend him. Trump and his treasonous conservative/America Hating/Republicans, including some here, took great offense at those stories and vehemently denied that Trump could not get any good lawyers. But once again we see what the anonymous sources wer saying is true. Trump is facing the greatest legal peril of his life. And all he can come up with to defend him is a clown car full of lawyers so incompetent that a judge not only rejected one of their court filings the judge actually referred them to a court website that has instructions on how to file briefs properly.


'The lawyering was so bad!' CNN's Elie Honig dumps on Trump attorneys' work in Mar-a-Lago docs case

Brad Reed
August 26, 2022



Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig appears on CNN (Screen cap).


CNN's Elie Honig absolutely shredded former President Donald Trump's legal team on Friday when discussing their stumbles in trying to defend their client in court.

While talking with CNN host John Berman, Honig went through Trump lawyers' recent request to have an independent third party go through all the documents seized by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month to determine if any of them are covered by executive privilege.

Honig said that the request itself was not remarkable -- but that the Trump team's incompetence in trying to make it was.

"The problem is Trump's legal team just blew it," he said. "The filing is a mess. Procedurally, the lawyering was so bad it was hard to look at, it made my teeth hurt."

READ MORE: Could Donald Trump’s Big Lie end up being good for democracy?

Honig then explained how this wasn't just his personal opinion alone, as the judge who reviewed the filing threw it back in the Trump lawyers' faces.

"The judge... rejected it!" he said. "She basically said why now, this motion is coming too early, why me, why not the other judge and what exactly do you want? I think they were fairly clear about what they wanted. The judge said, 'Go back to the drawing board, do it right this time, file by Friday.'"

Watch the video below or at this link.



https://www.rawstory.com/trump-lawyers-2657947601/

 

Oh, we need to look at this much closer

Recently there were a flurry of stories, most of them based on anonymous sources, about Trump not being able to get any good lawyers to defend him. Trump and his treasonous conservative/America Hating/Republicans, including some here, took great offense at those stories and vehemently denied that Trump could not get any good lawyers.
​

A quick search for "Trump, lawyers" in forum posts made after August 14 reveals 55 posts. 42 of them from stumbler. Of the other 13, 6 are from deplorables (Shooter and scotchlass) and none of the 6 address Trump's lawyers.
So, to say that forum posters who support Trump took Stumblers bait about Trump's lawyer troubles is a lie. A big fat lie. No one on the forum was offended by Stumblers posts about Trumps lawyer problems.

No one was paying the slightest attention to stumblers rants on the topic except stumbler and perhaps a few of his loyal followers. So, Stumblers attempt at elevating his importance around here, FAIL. Stumblers attempt to denegrate Trump followers FAIL. Stumblers attemp to further his lies FAIL.

But once again we see what the anonymous sources wer saying is true.​

So, considering the source to support this statement (wrong story, stumbler and CNN) and the fact that it is entirely the opinions of a bunch of butt hurt never trumpers suffering from TDS paid to take cheap shots at Trump pretty much calls into doubt the validity of Stumblers claim as well. So, more
FAIL.

 

First if you want to know what is coming out of the just released affidivat on the Mar a Lago search @thinskin posted this just excellent source from the Guardian. And its running commentary.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...bi-biden-abortion-student-loan-latest-updates


And now .......... criminal confederates .....


DOJ worried Trump's 'criminal confederates' might flee or tamper with evidence in Mar-A-Lago case

Travis Gettys
August 26, 2022



Donald Trump (Photo by Saul Loeb for AFP)


The Department of Justice wanted to keep the Mar-A-Lago affidavit sealed because investigators were concerned about tipping off additional suspects in the case.

A federal judge ordered the affidavit supporting the search warrant to be unsealed, with redactions of sensitive material, and the document showed that investigators were concerned about revealing the scope of their probe and their sources of evidence, arguing that witnesses could be threatened and their work could be obstructed.

"It is respectfully requested that this Court issue an order sealing, until further order of the Court, all papers submitted in support of this application, including the application and search warrant," said the FBI agent who signed the affidavit. "I believe that sealing this document is necessary because the items and information to be seized are relevant to an ongoing investigation and the FBI has not yet identified all potential criminal confederates nor located all evidence related to its investigation."

RELATED: Read the redacted FBI affidavit that resulted in Mar-a-Lago search warrant

They cited concerns about notifying those "potential criminal confederates" that their involvement was under investigation, which could give them a chance to interfere with the probe.

"Premature disclosure of the contents of this affidavit and related documents may have a significant and negative impact on the continuing investigation and may severely jeopardize its effectiveness by allowing criminal parties an opportunity to flee, destroy evidence (stored electronically and otherwise), change patterns of behavior, and notify criminal confederates," the affiant wrote.



https://www.rawstory.com/trump-criminal-confederates/

 

Legal experts pan Trump lawyers' Friday night do-over motion against Mar-a-Lago search

Bob Brigham
August 26, 2022



Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani taking a photo of the audience while on stage at a political event. Photo by Gage Skidmore.


Donald Trump's attorneys filed an 11-page Friday night motion after Judge Aileen Cannon made them restructure their filing for a special master to oversee the documents recovered when the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago.

"The filing, which was billed as a 'supplement' to Trump’s meandering initial bid on Monday, was notable, however, for what it didn’t include," Politico reported. "It makes no mention of the hundreds of pages of classified documents recovered during the Aug. 8 search and in previous visits by investigators. It also makes no mention of Trump’s claims to have declassified the material. It also eschews the heated criticism Trump has leveled at Bruce Reinhart, the magistrate judge who authorized the search."

The motion was signed by attorneys Lindsey Halligan, Jim Trusty, and Evan Corcoran.

Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman said, "Well at least they signed this one."

Other legal experts were similarly unimpressed.

Appellate attorney Ted Boutrous said the filing was, "very weak, very moot."

MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin noted Trump's lawyer's cited an interesting case without naming the subject.

"The case Trump’s lawyers cite as precedent for appointing a special master is . . . SDNY’s investigation of his former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani," Rubin noted. "It makes sense that privileged material would be found on Rudy’s seized devices. Not comparable to Trump. At all. (That would be 21-mc-00425, SDNY, which Trump’s brief does not acknowledge is about Rudy.)"

Attorney Bradley Moss said, "Still no Motion for Preliminary Injunction. No sworn affidavit. This was better written in form but not really substance."

Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti wrote, "The crux of this motion—a request for a special master to keep materials subject to executive privilege away from the Executive Branch—remains nonsensical. And even if this motion is granted, it doesn’t move the ball forward for Trump."

ALSO IN THE NEWS: Leaked video confirms disturbing history of Amy Coney Barrett’s faith sect: ‘Women were always crying’



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

 

Just another lie from a bloviating liar... Trump would never really stand in anyone's way...

 

There is an ancient Greek proverb which translates into the awkward English sentence, "Those who the Gods wish to destroy, they first drive insane."

Petulant hubris is a pretty good state of insanity. Most criminals break the law because they see some personal gain in the deal. Bank robbers want money, not the little paper bands around stacks of currency. Trump, on the other hand commits a crime which profits him absolutely nothing, after he has been forced out of the protection of the executive branch of the Federal government. This obviously gave him a false sense of immunity, which is insane in itself.

The only way to monetize stealing government documents is to sell the information to the people it's supposed to be kept secret from. If we dismiss that possibility, it's a totally superfluous crime. Unfortunately for Trump, he is surrounded by people who don't like the idea of thirty six months in Leavenworth Federal Prison.

Hamlet would say he was hoist with his own petard. A petard was an explosive device what was used to blow a hole in a castle gate. The problem was, somebody had to light the fuse and run up to the castle gate. Sometimes it went it off a little sooner than expected and the bomber got hoisted into the air. Trump is currently in mid air. All that's left is to wait for him to hit the ground.

 

All 'competent foreign intelligence services' were trying to get into Trump's Mar-a-Lago: former FBI official

Tom Boggioni
August 28, 2022



Donald and Melania Trump at Mar-a-Lago (Photo by Nicholas Kamm for AFP)

According to the former deputy Assistant Director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division, a myriad of foreign intelligence services were, and still are, focused on getting access to Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort which makes the shocking revelation that he kept top secret documents there even more disturbing.

Speaking with MSNBC host Katie Phang, ex-FBI agent Peter Strzok said the Florida resort was a hotbed of intrigue.

"Do you agree that it is a possibility that the Russians, especially with that very tight cozy connection that the Russians have had through [Vladimir] Putin with Donald Trump, that they would have been interested and possibly tried to infiltrate Mar-a-Lago to get to some of that data? " host Phang asked.

"Katie, absolutely the Russians but not just the Russians," the former FBI official replied.

"Any competent foreign intelligence service, whether those belonging to China, those belonging to Iran, Cuba, certainly including Russia are all both were interested and are interested in gaining access to Mar-a-Lago," he continued. "Which, especially considering the information coming out right now about the absolute lack of any control or memorialization of who the access to Mar-a-Lago at any given time, particularly in the context of the fact it appears the classified documents were strewn all over the facility and not just in the storage room."

"Classified documents were recovered from his office, from the pine hall, from a multitude of places," he elaborated. "So, if you are a foreign intelligence service, yes, of course regardless of the knowledge of classified documents being there, the intelligence services are going to have been trying to gain access."

Watch below or at this link.



https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-mar-a-lago-2657954749/

 

Strozck?
That traitorous lying son of a bitch should sit the fuck down.
Giving him the benefit of the doubt, he should be in Leavenworth for the rest of his life.

 

Former Acting CIA Director Bashes Trump Team’s ‘Sloppiness,’ Warns Mar-a-Lago Docs ‘Were Vulnerable’
By Ken MeyerAug 28th, 2022, 4:43 pm
2475 comments



Former acting and Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell warned that the classified documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago were “vulnerable” with the sloppy handling they had from former President Donald Trump’s team.

Morell spoke to CBS’s Major Garrett on Sunday for Face The Nation, where they discussed the release of the heavily-redacted affidavit used to authorize the FBI’s search warrant at Trump’s estate. Morell began his analysis by noting that classified documents were mixed with unclassified documents in the boxes of material the FBI retrieved.


“That suggested to me a sloppiness in the handling of classified documents at the White House. The two White Houses that I know best, the Bush White House and the Obama White House, there were very rigorous and strict protocols with regard to the handling of classified information, where it was, records were kept, retrievals were made. That’s what normally happens. That didn’t happen in this case, it sounds to me.”

Breaking down the classification markings on the documents, Morell noted that “the most sensitive material of the U.S. intelligence community” was included in the documents found at Mar-a-Lago. This prompted Garrett to ask “how vulnerable to compromise were the documents you were just talking about and were outlined in this affidavit?”

Morell’s answer:



I think they were vulnerable even at the White House, since they seem to have been mishandled at the White House as well, right? We have to look at that as well as Mar-a-Lago. And as the damage assessment goes forward, I think they need to look at both of those places. Not everyone at the White House has a top secret clearance. So you have to worry about who had access to those documents, who didn’t have clearance to do so.

In terms of the vulnerability from foreign intelligence services, a little context. If you look back at the history of espionage in the United States, you’ll see a number of Americans who were charged and convicted of espionage. And when you look at how long they spied before they were caught and you do all of that math, what you learn is that at any given moment in time, there are — on average — four Americans spying for foreign intelligence services without us knowing it at the time. And those are the ones we ultimately caught.

So there’s a lot of spying going on in Washington, right? And if you’re a foreign intelligence service and you want to target the United States government, what’s the number one place you want to target? The White House.

The discussion went on as Morell explained that people can be accused of mishandling classified information if documents are taken outside of sensitive compartmented information locations (SCIFS).

Watch above, via CBS.

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/former-...piness-warns-mar-a-lago-docs-were-vulnerable/

 

This is the man treasonous conservative/America Hating/Republicans are defending. A president that treated the most highly classified secrets our government has like they wer fuckinge newspaper clippings.


Official records would 'just disappear' after Trump took them, former White House press secretary says

Official records would 'just disappear' after Trump took them, former White House press secretary says

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Kiera Fields
Mon, August 29, 2022 at 6:08 AM·2 min read

• 
  Trump's former press secretary described the chaotic way he handed records as president.
  
  
• Stephanie Grisham said that he would haphazardly move files from his offices to his private rooms.
  
  
• Her account touches on the same issues of document-handling that led to the raid on Mar-a-Lago.
  

Former Trump White House press secretary Stephenie Grisham said official records would "just disappear" when Trump was around.

Grisham, who worked for Trump from July 2019 to April 2020, said Trump would routinely take official files from the working areas of the White House to his private presidential residence.

She told The Washington Post, "Any documents that made it to the White House residence were these boxes Trump carried around with him."


"Usually the body man would have brought them upstairs for Trump or someone from the outer-Oval at the end of the day," Grisham said. "They would get handed off to the residence and just disappear."

Grisham outlined how Trump often stored information in boxes: "There was no rhyme or reason — it was classified documents on top of newspapers on top of papers people printed out of things they wanted him to read. The boxes were never organized."

"He'd want to get work done on long trips so he'd just rummage through the boxes. That was our filing system," she said.

Grisham joined the Trump campaign in 2016 and initially worked for Melania Trump before being promoted the deal with the media as Trump's press secretary.

She lasted in that job for around a year before going back to work for Melania. She quit the administration on January 6, 2021, in the wake of the riot at the US Capitol.

Since then, Grisham has been a harsh critic of Trump and wrote an unflattering memoir about her time there. Trump attacked her in response, saying Grisham was "a deceitful and troubled individual who doesn't deserve anyone's trust," in a statement released the day before the publication of Grisham's book.

Trump's habit of taking records to his residence concerned officials while he was in office, and towards the end of his term staff at the National Archives tried to get them back.

Instead, Trump ended up taking dozens of boxes of records with him when he left office in January 2021, prompting a legal tussle that culminated in the August 8 FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.

Read the original article on Business Insider

https://www.yahoo.com/news/official-records-just-disappear-trump-120826540.html

 

Shooter is rereading the book "The President's Club".
It's about how former presidents are members of the most exclusive club in the world, the club of former presidents.
It talks about how former presidents who publicly hated eachother help out after they leave office.
Notably, Truman helped Hoover and vice versa, Eisenhower detested Truman but accepted his call for help, and so on.

There is one story in the book that applies to the current issue.
In 1946 Eisenhower had sent Marshall (his boss) a letter declaring that he was going to come home and divorce Mamie so he could marry his longtime lover, his driver, Capt. Kay Summersby. Marshall counseled Eisenhower not to do that, and Truman managed to get involved in a sort of behind-the-scenes way. Eisenhower of course did not divorce Mamie and did not marry his driver. If he had, there is a good chance Eisenhower would have never made it to president, attitudes about extra marital sex and divorce being what they were at the time.

In any case, when Truman left office those pesky letters were floating about and Truman personally destroyed them before he left, not wanting the remotest chance that they would surface later. This revelation came out when Eisenhower later did some document destruction of his own, involving rumors of he and a British actress, Kathleen Morrough.

In none of these cases did either president have to offer up any kind of explanation or request for permission; they simply took the documents at issue and destroyed them. And Ike's letters were reportedly marked TOP SECRET because they also dealt with post war issues in Germany.

 

Even if there were attorney/client documents it still doesn’t mean Trump can steal government docs: legal expert

Sarah K. Burris
August 30, 2022



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


The world is awaiting the Justice Department's filing in response to Donald Trump's demand for a court-appointed person to sift through all of the documents the FBI took as part of a search warrant.

Speaking to MSNBC about the impending filing, David Laufman, former chief of the Department of Justice counterintelligence section, and Neal Katyal, former acting Solicitor General, both explained that the idea of a special master, in this case, is a little absurd given that the documents have already been sorted.

"There's always been an erratic nature to the president's litigiousness," said Laufman. "He's not always been represented by the most shrewd, strategic thinking attorneys. This is a spaghetti-thrown-against-the-wall attempt, really, to throw a monkey wrench in the government's ongoing criminal investigation and possibly into the U.S. intelligence community's review of the classified documents that were seized in Mar-a-Lago."

He said that there is a "bizarre disconnect" between what Trump asked for in the motion and what FBI/DOJ filter teams do.

IN OTHER NEWS: Three Arizona Republicans must pay ex-Dem lawmaker’s $75,000 legal fees for ‘groundless’ lawsuit

"So, I expect the Justice Department brief to hammer hard on the inapplicability merit of this case, this is about government records, classified records, other presidential records," Laufman continued. "It has nothing to do with protecting the candor of presidential communications with close advisers. These are federal records. And with regard to the attorney-client issue, they have done what they always do. They have corrected a privilege review team to identify potentially -- that's the word they used in their brief -- potentially attorney/client privilege detail and discuss it with attorneys on the privilege review team to decide whether it should be treated with privilege or to throw it over the wall to the investigative team."

Katyal agreed with Laufman's assessment, noting that for Trump "it's always about me, me, me. It's not about the country. It's not about national security. It's just about him and never about the law either."

When it comes to the legal team for Trump, Katyal said it's hard not to see the political pandering. The demand to appoint a special master is an example of that and "ultimately it's meaningless."

"Special masters are appointed at the outset of a search, not after the government's already gone through all the documents," he went on. "The Trump team waited almost three weeks to file their quest, and it's practically useless at this point because the department, the FBI's already gone through these materials. You can't put that toothpaste back in the tube. Second, the investigation here is about -- it's not about the contents of the individual memos that he stole. It's about the fact he stole them. So, even if you found some documents that might be protected by executive privilege, which is, I think, ludicrous, but even if so, that wouldn't be a defense to the fact that he took them."

WATCH: Herschel Walker answers 'mental fitness' question with rant about bicycles

See the full discussion below:





https://www.rawstory.com/no-excuse-trump-documents-theft/

 

As we can see @shootersa was very concerned about the FBI initially taking Trump's passports and then giving them back.

And now all @shootersa's questions and panic over Trump's passports are explained.




DOJ reveals why FBI seized Trump's passports — and how it incriminates him further

Matthew Chapman
August 31, 2022



President of the United States Donald Trump speaking with supporters at a "Keep America Great" rally at Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, Arizona. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)


Two weeks ago, former President Donald Trump angrily accused FBI agents of confiscating his passports while executing the search at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

"Wow! In the raid by the FBI of Mar-a-Lago, they stole my three Passports (one expired), along with everything else," Trump posted to Truth Social at the time. "This is an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our Country. Third World!"

Ultimately, Justice Department officials returned his passports. But as part of a legal filing late Tuesday night, attorneys for the government explained there was an actual, valid reason why the passports were seized, according to Newsweek — and that reason further incriminates Trump.

"The agency said the former president's claim the FBI agents had improperly taken three of his passports while looking for sensitive material removed from the White House at his Florida home is 'incorrect,'" reported Ewan Palmer. "The Department of Justice explained that the passports were seized by the FBI as they were held in a desk drawer in Trump's office which also included classified documents, and therefore within the scope of the search warrant and relevant to the investigation."

RELATED: 'Astounding — I was floored': Former FBI official shocked by photos of documents Trump stashed at Mar-a-Lago

"The government seized the contents of a desk drawer that contained classified documents and governmental records commingled with other documents," explained prosecutors in the filing. "The other documents included two official passports, one of which was expired, and one personal passport, which was expired. The location of the passports is relevant evidence in an investigation of unauthorized retention and mishandling of national defense information."

As The Guardian's Hugo Lowell noted on Twitter, by seizing Trump's passports and cataloguing that they were in the same drawer as classified information, the Justice Department now has clear evidence that Trump himself must have been reviewing and holding onto these documents personally — as opposed to his staffers or lawyers doing so.

This comes as the Justice Department released damning new pictures as part of the same filing, showing documents with prominent "SECRET" and "TOP SECRET" cover pages that were seized as part of the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago.


https://www.rawstory.com/trump-passport/

 

And yet again we see Stumbler's obsession with copy N Paste.
Which still ignores the fundamental question.

The passports were not in anyway related to anything contemplated in the Search Warrants.
But say, lets assume they were in a drawer with documents that were contemplated in the Search Warrants.
That does not justify taking the passports.
Law 101 says so.
Think about it.
A search warrant specifies looking for drugs.
Drugs are found in a clothes closet.
The court would not want clothes in the closet to be taken as well.
They wouldn't want the shoes, or the blankets or whatever else is stored in the closet.
Drugs are what was specified. The rest is just there.

But lets carry this even further. The documents were found in a drawer, they said.
They took the passports but what about the pens, and tape, and paper clips and whatever else was in the drawer?
What about the drawer?
Should they also take the drawer?
What about the desk?
Maybe just take the entire desk. Not like they didn't have the manpower to do that.
What the hell; what about the entire room and it's contents?
Where does the reach stop, using the government attorney logic?

And it still begs the question;
Why weren't the passports listed in the inventory of things taken?
That violates basic rules of evidence and warrant execution as well.
Big time violates it.
Because it immediately raises the question of what else was taken that isn't listed in the inventory?
A rookie lawyer would have little problem getting the entire search and the seized documents tossed out of court.
Hell, the attorney could be forgiven for having a little fun with it.
Imagine cross examining the agent who took the passports and didn't list them in the inventory.

"So agent snoop, did you also search the underwear drawer in the room?"
"Well, I looked in it"
"And what did you see"
"Um, underwear"
"Mens or womens underwear, agent Snoop?"
"Um, it appeared to be ladies underwear"
"anything else?"
"No"
"And did you take any of that underwear, agent Snoop?"
"No, of course not."
"And why not?"
"Underwear wasn't listed in the warrant."
"Were President Trumps passports in the warrant?"
"Well no ....."
"But you took the passports?"
"Well yes, but ........"
"And didn't list them in the inventory?"
"Well no, but you see ..........."
"So, how do we know you didn't see a pair of ladies underwear that you found interesting, and just decided to take them and not list them in the inventory? After all, if the presidents passports weren't important enough to list in the inventory, what matter a pair of ladies underwear?"
"OBJECTION!!"
"We withdraw the question."
"These underwear, agent Snoop, were they clean or dirty?"
OBJECTION!!"​