Donald Trump's Former Press Secretary Claims She Had an Astonishing Firsthand View of How He Handled Classified Documents With Mar-a-Lago Guests
1k
Kristyn Burtt
Mon, July 3, 2023 at 9:43 AM MDT






Things aren’t looking so hot for Donald Trump in his classified documents case as one of his former spokespeople confirms that they saw him acting carelessly while he was president. Stephanie Grisham, the former White House communications director and press secretary during his administration, claims she witnessed him showing off a few of the top-secret papers to Mar-a-Lago guests.


“I watched him show documents to people at Mar-a-Lago on the dining room patio. So, he has no respect for classified information. Never did,” Grisham explained on MSNBC’s Alex Witt Reports. This is the second bombshell allegation in the case after CNN released secret audio that reportedly captures the then-president sharing Pentagon documents with top-secret information about an attack on Iran with writers working on Mark Meadows’ memoir. He’s even heard on the recording acknowledging that he was showing them “secret information.”


Grisham opened up about her reaction to hearing that recording for the first time, telling MSNBC, “You know, listening to that exchange every time, it just makes me so angry. He talks specifically that he should have declassified it, but he didn’t. So there, I think, is proof.” She also noted that the former president seemed to know that he was breaking the rules because he asked the journalists to keep quiet about seeing the Pentagon documents. “I believe also there’s a portion of that audio where he says, you know, this is off the record,” she added. “And I know Donald Trump knows the rules of reporters and he knows if it needs to be off the record that they can’t talk about it. So I think he was covering himself in that regard.”


Grisham, who wrote the 2021 book, I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House, has been critical of Donald Trump since leaving the White House and she is gravely concerned about his casualness with such crucial information. “I can’t stress enough how by being so loose with this stuff,” she summed up. “He’s potentially putting people in danger.”

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/donald-trumps-former-press-secretary-154335791.html

 

DOJ had Trump nailed on obstruction long before anyone realized: legal expert

Matthew Chapman
July 5, 2023, 6:59 PM ET



Photos: FBI


The Justice Department on Monday released a new, less-redacted version of the affidavit used to obtain the search warrant for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago last year, which formed a critical part of the investigation preceding former President Donald Trump's indictment under the Espionage Act.

There was not an enormous amount of new information in the unredactions — however, one thing that did stick out to former federal prosecutor Elie Honig was new information about the storage room, suggesting federal investigators knew more than previously understood about Trump's orders to subordinates to move around the boxes to hide them from investigators — which forms the backbone of the obstruction of justice charges against him.

"These details, as we know them so far, how significant are they in this affidavit that is now less redacted?" CNN anchor Alex Marquardt asked Honig. "What are we really learning from this affidavit with the details that have not been redacted?"

"Yeah, Alex, so Katelyn [Polantz] said there's new information in there about the storage room," said Honig. "The storage room is pivotal location in this whole story, because the intentional movement of documents by Donald Trump and his co-defendant Walt Nauta, into and out of that storage room, have now become the basis for the obstruction of justice charges, and so this tells us that DOJ prosecutors were onto that very early."

Another important thing to consider, Honig added, is that "while we in the public are seeing apparently still fairly heavily redacted version of this document, Donald Trump and Walt Nauta, as the criminal defendants in this case, they will get the whole thing."

"They are going to use that as the basis to challenge the legality of the search," Honig continued. "Nothing unusual about that. Virtually everyone who does get searched will bring a challenge. They will argue there was not probable cause or that the search exceeded the legal bounds. So that's an important discovery and motion dispute that's coming up later in this case."

Watch below or click here.



https://www.rawstory.com/trump-2662232061/

 

Surveillance of Mar-a-Lago liquor tunnel was key to Trump's document 'shell game': DOJ

Tom Boggioni
July 6, 2023, 2:12 PM ET



Leon Neal/Getty Images


According to the partially unredacted indictment filed against Donald Trump that led to a 37-count felony case in Florida, the Department of Justice's concerns that the former president was hiding documents was confirmed by surveillance video from a camera that documented comings and goings in a tunnel used to transport liquor.

As the Guardian's Hugo Lowell reported on Thursday, a hard drive that was handed over to DOJ investigators contained video from a camera designated as "South Tunnel Liquor."

A review of the footage showed boxes of documents being moved which set off alarm bells at the Justice Department.

According to the report, "When prosecutors reviewed the footage, they noticed that Trump’s valet Walt Nauta had removed more than 50 boxes from the storage room but did not bring the same number back before Trump’s then lawyer Evan Corcoran looked through them for any classified documents."

Read more: Justice Department moves to block Trump deposition in Peter Strzok's firing suit

In the affidavit that led to a search of Mar-a-Lago, an FBI agent wrote, “The current location of the boxes removed from the storage room but not returned to it is unknown,” which confirmed to investigators that there was more to be recovered than the former president has already returned.

"The conclusion inside the justice department’s national security division, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter and the language in the affidavit, was that 50 boxes should have yielded hundreds of classified documents if 15 boxes yielded 200," the report states before adding, "The suspicion that Trump had played what a federal judge later referred to as a 'shell game' with the boxes during the criminal investigation last year proved to be correct when the FBI executed the warrant in August 2022 and seized 103 classified documents from the storage room and Trump’s office."

You can read more here.



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

 

Special counsel blasts Trump’s bid to delay documents trial until 2024 election

John Locher/AP Photo
668
Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein
Thu, July 13, 2023 at 3:30 PM MDT




Special counsel Jack Smith’s team sharply rebuked Donald Trump’s bid to postpone until after the 2024 election his criminal trial for allegedly hoarding classified documents, characterizing the former president’s call for delay as unfounded and one of his key legal arguments as “borderline frivolous.”

In an 11-page filing signed by assistant special counsel David Harbach, prosecutors said federal law and the Constitution require the trial to be put on as soon as practical — not with an “open-ended” date built around Trump’s political calendar.

“There is no basis in law or fact for procee4d3ing in such an indeterminate and open-ended fashion, and the Defendants provide none,” Harbach writes.

The filing is Smith’s latest bid to prevail on U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon to adopt his proposed schedule, which would result in a trial opening in mid-December, a year sooner than Trump has called for.


Smith’s team rejected the notion that issues raised by Trump are particularly complex or unprecedented, citing cases related to former President Richard Nixon and cases that have upheld the power of special counsels to conduct federal investigations. And Trump’s contention that the Presidential Records Act — a federal recordkeeping law with no criminal component — provides him a defense in this case is “borderline frivolous,” Harbach wrote.

“The Defendants are, of course, free to make whatever arguments they like for dismissal of the indictment, and the Government will respond promptly,” he said. “But they should not be permitted to gesture at a baseless legal argument, call it ‘novel’ and then claim the court will require an indefinite continuance in order to resolve it.”

The prosecutors seemed to dance around the issue of Trump's reelection bid and the complications it is certain to cause for any trial in the coming year or more.

“The conditions that Defendants argue will make it a challenge to select a jury will not appreciably change after the completion of the election,” the special counsel’s team asserted.

The prosecution also appeared to dismiss the idea that Cannon should show any deference to the involvement of Trump and his close aide and co-defendant, Walt Nauta, in a campaign for the nation’s most important office.

“The demands of Defendants’ professional schedules do not provide a basis to delay trial in this case,” Harbach wrote. “Many indicted defendants have demanding jobs that require a considerable amount of their time and energy, or a significant amount of travel. The Speedy Trial Act contemplates no such factor as a basis for a continuance, and the Court should not indulge it here.”

The filing also provided a new glimpse into the volume of evidence prosecutors obtained, describing 4,500 pages of “key” documents that they have flagged for Trump’s attorneys out of a larger 800,000-page batch of unclassified evidence. About a third of those 800,000 pages — a figure Trump cited as a basis to delay the trial — are content-free email headers and footers, the special counsel team indicated.

In addition, prosecutors have turned over the vast majority of unclassified information to Trump’s legal team, including all witness statements given to prosecutors through May 12, 2023. More recent witness statements will be turned over in the next week, the Justice Department team said.

“The government has made these productions promptly despite having no obligation to do so,” Harbach wrote, citing Cannon’s trial procedures.

Most of the 340 classified documents relevant to the case will be provided to defense attorneys as soon as they receive interim clearances, he added, a process prosecutors have said can happen quickly. The remaining few would be shared after a 45 to 60 day clearance process, they noted in a recent filing.

All documents and witness statements containing classified information for which defense counsel have been cleared will be delivered to a federal courthouse in Miami “early next week,” Harbach indicated. That courthouse is equipped with a secure facility for cleared lawyers to review classified material.

Prosecutors also indicated they produced all search warrants and relevant material from devices it obtained with a few exceptions: three devices “produced voluntarily” whose relevant contents will be shared next week and two devices obtained from Nauta.

While federal magistrate judges handled the initial arraignments in the case, the first hearing before Cannon, a Trump appointee, is set to take place on Tuesday in Fort Pierce, Fla. The announced subject for the hearing is the process and schedule for handling classified information in the case. It’s unclear whether any or all of that session will be open to the press or public.



https://www.yahoo.com/news/special-counsel-blasts-trump-bid-213010953.html

 

Trump cult followers will just automatically believe anything he says. Even when all they would have to do is just read the Presidential Records Act to know Trump is lying.

§ 2201. Definitions

As used in this chapter--

(1) The term "documentary material" means all books, correspondence, memoranda, documents, papers, pamphlets, works of art, models, pictures, photographs, plats, maps, films, and motion pictures, including, but not limited to, audio and visual records, or other electronic or mechanical recordations, whether in analog, digital, or any other form.

(2) The term "Presidential records" means documentary materials, or any reasonably segregable portion thereof, created or received by the President, the President’s immediate staff, or a unit or individual of the Executive Office of the President whose function is to advise or assist the President, in the course of conducting activities which relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President. Such term--

(A) includes any documentary materials relating to the political activities of the President or members of the President’s staff, but only if such activities relate to or have a direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President; but

https://www.archives.gov/about/laws/presidential-records.html






Trump Roasted For Making Up A Law 'Out Of Thin Air' About Classified Documents

Trump Roasted For Making Up A Law 'Out Of Thin Air' About Classified Documents
594
Josephine Harvey
Mon, July 17, 2023 at 5:16 AM MDT


Legal experts and critics lashed Donald Trump over the weekend after he fabricated a law he claimed gives presidents the “absolute and unquestioned right” to take any documents when they leave office.

The former president made the claim during a speech at the conservative Turning Point Action Conference in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Saturday.

While railing against last month’s federal Espionage Act indictment over his handling of classified documents taken from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago estate, Trump claimed: “Whatever documents a president decides to take with him, he has the absolute and unquestioned right to do so.”

“This was a law that was passed and signed,” he insisted. “And it couldn’t be more clear.”


Legal experts did not agree. Laurence Tribe, a legal scholar and Harvard University professor emeritus, said “no such law exists.”

National security attorney Bradley P. Moss said it was an illegitimate argument that would fail in court. “It’s a political talking point. That’s all,” he tweeted.

Trump has made similar claims in the past. Last month, he argued that a president leaving office has the “absolute right to keep [documents] or he can give them back to NARA if he wants,” referring to the National Archives and Records Administration.

His assertions have been repeatedly debunked by legal experts, who noted that the Presidential Records Act Trump has cited in his defense actually states the opposite. The 1978 law requires records created by presidents and vice presidents to be turned over to NARA at the end of their administrations.

Trump has also claimed he could take any documents he wanted because he had a “standing order” to automatically declassify any documents he took from the White House ― a claim that has been contradicted by many high-ranking members of his own administration, the relevant federal agencies and his own comments on a 2021 tape obtained by CNN.

His latest fiction drew backlash and ridicule online:


Spiro’s Ghost
@AntiToxicPeople
·
Follow
THE LAW LITERALLY SAYS 100.00% THE INVERSE OF THIS. Its entire purpose was to do the inverse of what he is saying! A lobotomized person can read the Presidential Records Act and discern this in 4 seconds.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-roasted-making-law-thin-111625382.html

 

What you mean the non existent red wave And BTW it wasn't a raid, it was a lawful search for stolen classified documents.

 

This is breaking really fast right now and I will have to look for more details. But one thing gobsmacking the pundits and ex prosecutors is the amount of detail and evidence Jack Smith just revealed. And its a bunch including new videos.



Politics
Trump hit with new charges as special counsel expands Mar-a-Lago documents case


Washington — Prosecutors with special counsel Jack Smith's office have added new charges against former President Donald Trump in the case involving documents with classified markings discovered at this Florida resort of Mar-a-Lago, according to court papers filed in federal court Thursday evening.

A superseding indictment unsealed by the Justice Department lists multiple new counts against Trump, including: altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing an object; and corruptly altering, destroying, mutilating or concealing a document, record or other object; and an additional charge of willful retention of national defense information.

Trump was previously charged with 37 felony counts, including 31 counts of willful retention of classified documents and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice. He has pleaded not guilty and claimed the prosecution is a politically motivated "witch hunt" against him. Walt Nauta, the former president's aide, was also charged in the case and pleaded not guilty.

Attorneys for Trump and Nauta did not immediately return requests for comment.

The new document also names a third defendant in the case: Carlos De Oliveira, a Mar-a-Lago property manager and former valet. He faces one count of altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing an object; one count of corruptly altering, destroying, mutilating or concealing a document, record or other object; and one count of making false statements and representations during a voluntary interview with federal investigators.



He has been ordered to appear in federal court in Miami on Monday morning. An attorney for De Oliveira declined to comment.

Steve Cheung, spokesman for the Trump campaign, claimed the new counts are part of an effort to damage Trump as he seeks the Republican presidential nomination and "nothing more than a continued desperate and flailing attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their Department of Justice to harass President Trump and those around him."

The judge in the case, Judge Aileen Cannon, has set a trial date of May 2024.

The new charges come as the former president and his attorneys are waiting for the possibility of a separate indictment stemming from Smith's investigation into attempts to alter the 2020 presidential election and interfere with the peaceful transfer of power. Trump's attorneys met with federal prosecutors at the special counsel's office Thursday in Washington, D.C. He has also denied wrongdoing in this case.


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-charges-indictment-documents-case-mar-a-lago/

 

The print sites still aren't able to keep up with the revelations I am seeing on MSNBC where the legal experts and ex prosecutors are still pouring over the superseding indictment. But if I've got it right Trump showed the classified document on an Iran attack plan to staff and writers who had no security clearances. That is on tape. But then the document ended up among some of the records Trump finally sent back to the National Archives. Which is where prosecutors found it. So they have the tape, the actual document, and witnesses.

Trump charged with retaining classified document he bragged about on tape

• Zachary Basu

Trump at Bedminster. Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Former President Trump was charged Thursday with a new count of retaining classified material stemming from a taped conversation about a Pentagon "plan of attack" he shared at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey.

Why it matters: Trump explicitly denied that he had any classified documents with him after CNN published the explosive recording of the July 2021 incident last month. Prosecutors now allege he did, in fact, illegally possess a "presentation concerning military activity in a foreign country."

• "I would say it was bravado, if you want to know the truth, it was bravado," Trump told reporters aboard his plane last month.
• "I was talking and just holding up papers and talking about them, but I had no documents. I didn’t have any documents."

Details: The recording was made when Trump gave an interview at Bedminster to a writer and publisher working on a memoir for his former chief of staff Mark Meadows.

• Neither had a security clearance, nor did the Trump staff members present at the meeting, the indictment alleges.
• "This is secret information," Trump says in the recording, in which he claims then-Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley presented him with a plan to attack Iran. "This was done by the military and given to me."
• Trump goes on to say in the recording that he could have declassified the information while president, but that he no longer had the power.

The big picture: Trump, his aide Walt Nauta and a new defendant, Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker Carlos de Oliveira, were also charged in Thursday's superseding indictment with two new counts of obstruction of justice.

• The new charges are based on allegations that the defendants attempted to delete Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage to prevent it from being provided to the federal grand jury investigating Trump's handling of classified documents.
• "This is nothing more than a continued desperate and flailing attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their Department of Justice to harass President Trump and those around him," the Trump campaign said in a statement responding to the indictment.

https://www.axios.com/2023/07/27/trump-additional-charges-classified-documents-bedminster-recording

 

One thing Jack Smith has been very consistent about is when he unseals an indictment he leaves the pundits and ex prosecutors saying OMG how in the fuck did he get all this evidence. And each time it seems to be more shocking to them. Like in the superseding indictment he just released which includes videos, texts, contents of phone calls and even what were supposed to be encrypted Signal discussions. Smith has multiple cooperating witnesses. But some ex prosecutors are mow wondering if the DOJ did not tap Trump's phone. Which would not be out of the question considering the top secret nature of the documents Trump stole and the amount damage of they could to to national security if Trump was talking about them to other people.


Former Trump administration lawyer on Mar-a-Lago investigation: ‘The evidence is so overwhelming’

709
Joe Jacquez
Thu, July 27, 2023 at 8:47 PM MDT




Former White House lawyer Ty Cobb said there is overwhelming evidence in the classified documents case against former President Trump following the announcement of new charges from the Justice Department.

Cobb, a lawyer who served under the Trump administration, claimed the superseding indictment unveiled Thursday by federal prosecutors will “last an antiquity,” during an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett.

“I think this original indictment was engineered to last 1,000 years and now this superseeding indictment will last an antiquity,” Cobb said. “This is such a tight case, the evidence is so overwhelming.”


Trump, already facing 37 counts related to mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, was levied three additional counts Thursday unveiled by DOJ special counsel Jack Smith.


Prosecutors added allegations that Trump urged surveillance footage to be deleted at Mar-a-Lago and that he knowingly kept an additional sensitive document. The property manager of the resort, Carlos De Oliveira, was also charged alongside aide Walt Nauta as a co-conspirator.

ANALYSIS: Five revelations from new Trump charges

Cobb turned the spotlight on the meeting Trump confirmed his lawyers had with DOJ prosecutors earlier Thursday.

The former president called the meeting “productive,” and implied that his attorneys were given no notice that he would be indicted.

“I can’t imagine how Trump could say his lawyers met with Jack Smith today to explain that he hadn’t done anything wrong on the same day that Jack Smtih produces this,” Cobb told CNN, adding that it is “overwhelming evidence of additional wrongdoing on his part.”



The former administration lawyer went on to say that Trump’s alleged direct dealings with Oliveira and Nauta is being ignored in the discussion about this new indictment, “at a time when Evan Corcoran (Trump) has been told by him that there are no additional documents … and his lawyers certainly … at some point advised him to not to destroy, move or obstruct this grand jury supoena in any way.”

“This is Trump not just going behind the back of the prosecutors, this is Trump going behind the back of his own lawyers, and dealing with two people who were extremely loyal to him,” he added.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/former-trump-administration-lawyer-mar-024736465.html

 

Roughly one third of the United States wants Trump to be president. When told of Trump's crimes their attitude is, "We know. We don't care. We want him to be President."

That is why, before the beginning of the Republican National Convention, it is necessary that Trump is in a maximum security prison serving a long sentence.

 

This photo looks like it was taken at a Trump rally. Who is that Hitler impersonator in the middle?

 

Hitler, and Mussolini also loved to have rallies. Fascists love political rallies.

 

Trump certainly tapped into fascist ideals. Most likely fed to him by others though. As I doubt Trump ever read a history book in his life.

Fascist mass rallies:

"When he for the first time goes from a petty workshop or from a large factory, where he feels insignificant, to a mass demonstration surrounded by thousands and thousands of like-minded fellows—when he as a seeker is gripped by the intoxicating surge of enthusiasm among three or four thousand others—when the visible success and the consensus of thousands of others prove the correctness of his new political creed and for the first time arouse doubts about his previous political convictions—then he submits to the miraculous influence of what we call “mass suggestion.” The will, the yearning, and also the power of thousands of fellow citizens now fill every individual. The man who full of doubts and uncertain enters such a gathering, leaves it inwardly strengthened; he has become a member of a community."

 

I always get a special kick out of it anytime I see Peter Strzok or Andrew McCabe on TV discussing Trump's indictments and ongoing investigations. There they are pointing out Trump's gilt after Trump and his treasonous conservative/America Hating/Republicans screamed for years they were the ones going to prison.







Trump sounds like mob boss in Special Counsel's new obstruction charges in classified documents case

7
Sat, July 29, 2023 at 9:06 AM MDT




In Special Counsel Jack Smith's superseding indictment, a low-level Mar-a-Lago employee referred to former President Donald Trump when saying "the boss" wanted a server containing surveillance video deleted. Former FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok talks to Katie Phang about the devastating evidence in just one of the federal investigations into Trump.



https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-sounds-mob-boss-special-150657618.html

 

How the FBI knew what to search for at Mar-a-Lago – and why the Presidential Records Act is an essential tool for the National Archives and future historians
787
Shannon Bow O'Brien, Associate Professor of Instruction, The University of Texas at Austin
Sun, July 30, 2023 at 9:09 AM MDT



A new indictment of former President Donald Trump on July 27, 2023, added another charge related to retention of classified documents to an existing indictment issued last month. The charges followed a long process of the National Archives and Records Administration asking the former president on multiple occasions to return the records he took with him after he left office. The Conversation U.S. asked Shannon Bow O'Brien, a scholar of the presidency at the University of Texas, Austin College of Liberal Arts, to discuss the history, law and customs associated with presidential archives.

How do the archivists actually know what’s missing? Isn’t that hard to figure out?
The archivists probably have a really keen idea of what is and what isn’t missing, based upon things that they’ve gotten out of other offices, like the vice president’s office and things that got deposited from the secretary of state, for example. There are a lot of papers that are referenced and cross-referenced, multiple copies or multiple things going in and out of offices.


One scholar did a study of the presidents’ annual Christmas speech at the Ellipse in Washington. He looked at how the speeches – from the Roosevelt administration to the present – developed, and it was kind of a ring-around-the-rosy inside the West Wing and within the departments – what went in, what went out, what went in, what went out. Who won and who didn’t win. Everybody left their marks on the speeches. All of those changes and requests appear in documents, and if part of the conversation is missing from the National Archives, it’s obvious.

We know from other presidents’ records that really comprehensive records are kept via daily manifests of what the presidents are doing. And while I am not a historian, it’s not unreasonable to assume that the other departments and agencies likewise have daily manifests of their top officials. So if they know that someone at an agency sent something over to the White House that was this or that, and it came back from the White House with this or that, then there should be a document somewhere that’s got something from the White House on it – and if you’re missing that, that’s a problem.

Will the public find out what was in these documents, given that they are classified?
The indictment against Trump spells out the grade of classification the documents had – they get different levels based on the level of seriousness – but only vaguely refers to the contents. We’ll be lucky to ever know if, and when, the documents get declassified, although some more description of the contents could come out during the trial.

What’s the law that governs what happens to a president’s documents?
It’s the Presidential Records Act. It came about originally because these guys, the presidents, were just kind of doing whatever the heck they wanted with their records. Hoover donates his; FDR doesn’t.

The act, first passed in 1978, says administrations have to retain “any documentary materials relating to the political activities of the President or members of the President’s staff, but only if such activities relate to or have a direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.”

An administration is allowed to exclude personal records that are purely private or don’t have an effect on the duties of a president. All public events are included, such as quick comments on the South Lawn, short exchanges with reporters and all public speeches, radio addresses and even public telephone calls to astronauts in space. Diaries and journals are off limits, but any papers to carry out the job are public records.

Have there been other controversies over presidential records?
There’s one that poses an essential question: What value can you place on history? In 1998, the Nixon estate felt his records had a monetary value of over US0 million and sued the government, which had seized the records, for what they believed their value amounted to.


The actions of U.S. President Richard Nixon prompted numerous federal presidential record-keeping laws after the Watergate scandal. Don Carl Steffen/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
There’s a two-decade background to the case. After he left the presidency, Nixon brokered a deal with the General Services Administration about the retention of his records, but when knowledge of it became public, there was considerable outcry. A large amount of material was to be withheld from public view, and there was concern the depth of Nixon’s true involvement in Watergate would be obscured.

Congress responded and in 1974, President Gerald Ford signed the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act to specifically apply to Nixon’s presidential materials. It gave the archivists the power to seize materials from Nixon’s time in the White House and return those deemed private.

Nixon immediately sued over who possessed his records. While he had already been pardoned when it was enacted, Nixon was concerned about his reputation and legacy. He wanted control over what the public saw about his time in office. One of the major issues in front of the court involved the disposition of documents he believed were private. Given the scandal associated with his resignation, should these documents be inspected by archivists for veracity?

More important, did the government have the right to seize presidential documents?

In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court rejected all of Nixon’s arguments. They said his privacy rights were still intact because the archivists were not making things immediately public but inspecting them and retaining public items while returning family ones. The court noted the “unblemished record of the archivists for discretion.”

In 2000, the lawsuit was settled over the Nixon records, with the bulk of the settlement money going to pay attorney fees. Some observers were unhappy, because these documents should have already been considered public, but the decision was likely made to finally close this chapter on American history. In 2007, the Nixon library in California became public and integrated into National Archives.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/fbi-knew-search-mar-lago-172833390.html

 

All of Trump's 'yes' men are turning on him — and it's driving him 'nuts': MSNBC legal analyst

Matthew Chapman
July 31, 2023, 8:46 PM ET



Drew Angerer/Getty Images


One of the big problems former President Donald Trump will face, now that the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case is entering a new phase, is learning that many of his professed loyalists are secretly looking to save themselves, argued former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner on MSNBC's "The ReidOut."

This comes as a new report reveals a Trump PAC has paid millions of dollars to provide the former president's co-defendants with legal counsel.

"Trump is now going to know who got offered deals," said anchor Joy Reid. "And then what could he do with that?"

"Well, first of all, what could Trump do with it?" said Kirschner. "He could — let me use the term 'mob lawyer.' I'm not accusing anybody of being a mob lawyer, but when we hear the term, what does that conjure up? The mob boss gets a lawyer or lawyers for all of his underlings, his wise guys, because he wants to keep them all close. He wants to keep them into the fold, and here is the thing. The Sixth Amendment right to counsel in the Constitution provides that not only does everybody have a right to counsel, you have a right to zealous counsel, effective counsel and, most importantly for our purposes here, conflict-free counsel."

The upshot, Kirschner said, is that "it's going to be so important for the prosecutors to do whatever they can — and there are some things that they can do. They can ask a judge to appoint conflict-free counsel for purposes of broaching possible cooperation if you know the lawyer happens to be somebody doing the boss' bidding rather than representing the interest of the client."

"But this has to drive Donald Trump nuts every time he gets a discovery dump like this," added Kirschner. "He is seeing in black and white that more people who were telling him at Mar-a-Lago, 'You the man, it's a witch hunt, you did nothing wrong' — now he sees what they are really saying and it's got to drive him nuts, but the sense is you know, he knows that indictments are coming."

Watch the video below or at the link here.

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-prosecution-2662664994/

 

Trump’s Legal Team Is Enmeshed in a Tangle of Possible Conflicts
Alan Feuer
Sun, August 6, 2023 at 8:55 AM MDT·8 min read
2.3k



Former President Donald Trump speaks at the 56th annual Silver Elephant Gala in Columbia, S.C., Saturday, Aug. 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Artie Walker Jr.) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)


M. Evan Corcoran, a lawyer who accompanied former President Donald Trump to court this week for his arraignment on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 election, has given crucial evidence in Trump’s other federal case — the one accusing him of illegally hoarding classified documents.

Another lawyer close to Trump, Boris Epshteyn, sat for an interview with prosecutors this past spring and could be one of the former president’s co-conspirators in the election tampering case.

And Epshteyn’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, is defending Trump against both the documents and election case indictments.

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The legal team that Trump has assembled to represent him in the twin prosecutions by the special counsel, Jack Smith, is marked by a tangled web of potential conflicts and overlapping interests — so much so that Smith’s office has started asking questions.

Although it is not uncommon for lawyers in complex matters — such as large mob cases or financial inquiries — to wear many hats or to play competing roles, the Gordian knot of intertwined imperatives in the Trump investigations is particularly intricate and insular.

Some of the lawyers involved in the cases are representing both charged defendants and uncharged witnesses. At least one could eventually become a defendant, and another could end up as a witness in one case and Trump’s defender in a different one.

All of that sits atop another thorny fact: Many of the lawyers are being paid by Save America PAC, Trump’s political action committee, which has been under government scrutiny for months. Some of the witnesses those lawyers represent work for the Trump Organization, Trump’s company, but their legal defense has not been arranged by the company, but, rather, by Trump’s own legal team, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

Although clients might choose to stick with their lawyers despite a conflict, just this week, prosecutors under Smith sent up a warning flare about these issues. They asked Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the documents case, to conduct a hearing “regarding potential conflicts” arising from the complex client list of one lawyer, Stanley Woodward Jr.

Woodward represents Walt Nauta, Trump’s personal aide and one of his co-defendants in the documents case. Woodward has also worked for at least three witnesses in the broader inquiry who could be called to testify at trial.

One of those witnesses, Yuscil Taveras, an information technology worker at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, recently provided prosecutors with potentially incriminating information about Nauta after parting ways with Woodward and getting a new lawyer.

In a motion to Cannon filed Wednesday, prosecutors said that given all of this, Woodward could have “divided loyalties” and asked Cannon to inform Woodward’s clients about the “potential risks” they face.

Prosecutors appear to have similar qualms about another lawyer in the documents case, John Irving, who represents Carlos De Oliveira, Trump’s other co-defendant, according to people familiar with the matter. Irving’s client list also includes three witnesses who were interviewed by investigators and could, in theory, end up on the stand.

Woodward has signaled that he will not contest the need to hold a hearing. And he and Irving, both of whom declined to comment, disclosed the potential conflicts to their clients early on, informing them that there could come a point when they would need new lawyers, according to people familiar with the matter.

In a statement, Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump, argued that it would be normal for the judge to hold a hearing to consider the potential conflicts, describing it as “commonplace” in such a broad case.

“There is nothing unusual or concerning about any court confirming that President Trump and others are aware of any potential waivable conflicts issues, of which they all are certainly already aware,” he said. “Any attempt to read into this or otherwise guess about the president’s legal strategy is ridiculous and sad.”

Still, the complexities surrounding the case are extensive and have raised concerns for prosecutors.

“This is boundary breaking,” Bruce Green, who teaches legal ethics at Fordham Law School in New York, said about the totality of the issues involved. “What I’m most curious about is why these lawyers want to play so many roles. Usually, lawyers just want to be lawyers.”

The potential conflicts confronting the lawyers in Trump’s prosecutions come from a variety of sources.

Some involve situations in which the lawyers could be put in the untenable position of cross-examining a former client in the service of defending a current one. Others stem from bumping up against the guardrails put in place to keep lawyers from advocating for their clients with one hand while possibly incriminating them with the other.

Then there is the issue of the lawyers’ bills largely being paid by Trump’s PAC. That situation, said Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics professor at New York University, was theoretically not all that unusual. Organizations often foot the bill for employees who need legal representation resulting from “the scope of their employment,” he said.

Still, Gillers said, problems can arise when the entity paying the fees chooses or steers a lawyer toward a client and that lawyer has competing loyalties when it comes to the payer and the client’s best interests.

Many potential objections to conflicts in these cases could be waived by the clients or otherwise mitigated by the courts, Green said. But he cautioned that judges often lean toward avoiding conflicts at all costs — up to and including disqualifying lawyers who face them — because the consequences of allowing them to continue could result in the dismissal of the case.

One of the most awkward situations in a Trump-related case came Thursday when the former president was accompanied to his arraignment on election interference charges by Corcoran, a lawyer who had worked with him before on both that matter and the documents case.

Corcoran’s presence in the courtroom was somewhat unexpected because five months ago a federal judge had ordered him to provide Smith with the extensive audio notes he made about his work for Trump. The recorded notes were handed over after the judge determined that Trump had probably misled Corcoran and tried to use his legal services to commit a crime — an exception to the attorney-client privilege that would normally protect such recordings.

The audio notes, in which Corcoran described assisting Trump to comply with a subpoena that demanded all of the classified materials in his possession, played a central role in the indictment that was filed in June accusing Trump of illegally retaining more than 30 sensitive documents after leaving office.

The notes laid out in detail how Trump pressured Corcoran to prevent investigators from reclaiming classified material, according to the indictment, suggesting that he “hide or destroy documents called for by the grand jury subpoena.”

Prosecutors are likely to call Corcoran as a witness at Trump’s documents trial in Florida, even as he might continue to assist the former president’s defense team on the election case in Washington, people with knowledge of the matter have said. Smith’s prosecutors have inquired about Corcoran’s role in the election case but have not yet signaled that they plan to object to it.

Although he was in court Thursday, Corcoran has not formally appeared on Trump’s behalf in the case. And if there were a conflict, Trump could choose to waive potential objections to it. It is unclear why Trump, who prizes loyalty, would continue to want Corcoran’s assistance.

But it could be part of a long-shot challenge to the so-called crime-fraud exception that permitted the notes to handed over in the documents case.

“There is a rule called the advocate-witness rule that forbids lawyers from occupying both roles, and Trump may believe it will be easier to keep Corcoran off the stand and to exclude his grand jury testimony if he remains on the trial team,” Gillers said.

A different twist emerged Tuesday when the election case indictment was handed up in Washington. The charges mentioned six co-conspirators who helped Trump to execute his plans. One of them — co-conspirator 6 — was described as a “political consultant” who assisted Trump in what has become known as the “fake electors” scheme.

Although prosecutors have not identified co-conspirator 6, an email obtained by The New York Times suggests that it could be Epshteyn, a lawyer and strategic adviser to Trump who was paid for political consulting in 2020 and who has served throughout the recent investigations as one of his top advisers and his in-house counsel. The email’s contents and its recipient — Trump’s former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who is co-conspirator 1 in the indictment — match that of an email described in the indictment as sent by co-conspirator 6.

It would be an uncomfortable development, to say the least, if Epshteyn, who often travels with the former president and accompanied him to his arraignment Thursday, was also an unnamed, unindicted participant in the case.

There is also the fact that Ephsteyn’s lawyer, Blanche, is a lawyer for Trump and is representing the former president not only in the two cases brought by Smith but in a case brought by the Manhattan district attorney. In that case, Trump has been accused of 34 felonies stemming from a hush payment to a porn actress in the run-up to the 2016 election.

Ephsteyn hired Blanche last year before any of the cases against Trump had been filed. Blanche declined to comment.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-legal-team-enmeshed-tangle-145510320.html

 

Mike Pence backs Mark Meadows after he tells investigators Trump did not declassify documents

David Edwards
August 20, 2023, 9:49 AM ET




Former Vice President Mike Pence backed former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows after he claimed then-President Donald Trump did not declassify documents en masse before leaving office.

On Sunday, ABC News reported Meadows did not know of any attempt for the mass declassification of documents before Trump left office. Trump faces more than two dozen counts in a classified documents case in Miami.

"As you know, Donald Trump has claimed that all those documents he took with him to Mar-a-Lago, he had declassified," ABC host Jonathan Karl explained to Pence. "But we are learning that Meadows has told investigators that he knew of no such broad declassification order from Donald Trump."

"Had you heard anything to suggest that the president had issued an order, even a standing order, declassifying documents like that?" he asked.


"I can't really comment on your reporting, but in my case, I was never made aware of any broad-based effort to declassify documents," Pence revealed.

The former vice president recalled that the White House occasionally declassified documents.

"I'm aware of that occurring on several occasions over the course of our four years, but I don't have any knowledge of any broad-based directive from the president," he added.

Watch the video below from ABC News or at the link.




https://www.rawstory.com/pence-meadows-documents/

 

Mark Meadows says Trump left top secret Iran war plans on couch at Bedminster golf resort
2023/08/21
Published
2023/08/21 12:59 (EDT)

Ex-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows reportedly wrote in a draft of his memoir that his old boss, former President Donald Trump, left a top secret Iran war plan on a couch at his New Jersey golf resort during an interview with a ghost writer.

Meadows told prosecutors from special counsel Jack Smith’s team that he heard about the shocking incident by the writer and a publicist but soft-pedaled it in the final published version of his book because it could be “problematic” for Trump, ABC News reported.

“On the couch in front of (Trump’s) desk, there’s a four-page report typed up by (Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley) himself,” the draft read, according to ABC. “It shows the general’s own plan to attack Iran, something he urged President Trump to do more than once during his presidency.”

Trump has been charged with improperly showing the document to the underlings as part of a superseding indictment to the classified documents case.

He was already charged with mishandling dozens of documents that he took with him when he left the White House and defying official efforts to get them back.

Trump allegedly brought the Iran war plan to New Jersey and whipped it out to show the underlings during an interview in summer 2021 as Meadows collected material for his book,“The Chief’s Chief.”

Considering it important ammunition in his odd feud with Milley, Trump was already accused of boasting to the aides that the document proved his point that Milley was a warmonger.

In so doing, Trump admitted that the document remained classified and that he shouldn’t be showing it, effectively contradicting his own oft-repeated claims he had declassified all the documents.

“It is like, highly confidential. Secret. This is secret information,” Trump said, according to an audiotape of the meeting. “Look, look at this. This was done by the military and given to me. As president I could have declassified, but now I can’t.”

The new bombshell suggests Trump was even more reckless than previously known with the secret plan, which would be of immeasurable value to geopolitical enemies or the U.S. as well as Iran-hating allies like Israel and particularly Saudi Arabia.

Meadows told prosecutors that Trump never told him he had declassified large numbers of secret documents, contradicting his former boss’ claims about the documents. He also shot down the outlandish claim that Trump had a so-called “standing order” to declassify any documents he took away from the White House.

The report did not clear up uncertainty about Meadows’ role in the various prosecutions of Trump.

Meadows has not been charged in the Mar-a-Lago documents case or the federal Jan. 6 case despite being Trump’s top lieutenant. Smith did not name Meadows as an unindicted co-conspirator in the election case, raising suspicions he had cut some kind of deal to avoid prosecution.

But the former North Carolina congressman was charged last week as one of Trump’s 18 co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case, which has been charged under the state’s potent racketeering law.

He has asked a judge to move his case to federal court or dismiss it altogether, asserting that he was performing the duties of his federal job when he allegedly helped Trump overturn his loss to President Joe Biden in the Peach State.

https://nordot.app/1066401686794944996?c=592622757532812385