Trump Administration - Festering Skidmarks

[goldenvalley]

Aug 9, 2022 0:09:37 GMT goldenvalley said:

Aug 8, 2022 23:31:55 GMT LFC said:

Great find! Let's not get too excited though.  It could a long time before we see anything further on whatever prompted the warrant.

Looks like the subpoena has to do with classified docs that ended up in Florida. I'm guessing he didn't turn over everything that Archives said should have been surrendered to them...that he didn't flush....

[AnBr]

[indy]

Well, according to the CNN, FBI investigators may have saw documents in Trump's basement that had 'top secret' markings.

So, the crime it may be for is the one he accused Hilary Clinton of and spawned the 'lock her up!' chant, which was the mishandling of classified documents.

[goldenvalley]

Aug 9, 2022 14:27:00 GMT indy said:

Well, according to the CNN, FBI investigators may have saw documents in Trump's basement that had 'top secret' markings.

So, the crime it may be for is the one he accused Hilary Clinton of and spawned the 'lock her up!' chant, which was the mishandling of classified documents.

Yeah well Trump is still president so he's entitled to those documents, especially the ones in his safe!

[LFC]

There's always something else vile and disgusting to find out about Trump. He's a bottomless pit of inhumanity and mental illness.

The Measure Of The Man

From the new book by Susan Glasser and Peter Baker:

Trump: “Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade. This doesn’t look good for me.”

Kelly: “Those are the heroes. In our society, there’s only one group of people who are more heroic than they are—and they are buried over in Arlington.”

Trump: “I don’t want them. It doesn’t look good for me.”

[LFC]

Trump had months to avoid this.

Months Of Negotiations Preceded FBI Searches

Some of the relevant history here comes down to the months that the National Archives spent negotiating with Trump’s attorneys before the Monday searches at Mar-a-Lago took place.

Per the Washington Post, discussions began in late 2021, and continued after Trump handed over records in January 2022. The National Archives issued a statement in February noting that representatives for Trump told the archives that they were “continuing to search for additional Presidential records that belong to the National Archives.”

Anne Weismann, a former chief counsel for CREW, remarked to TPM that attorneys for NARA had tried to get the documents, but had been “rebuffed.”

“I’m curious about what the nature of the negotiations and discussions have been up to this point,” she said. “How did they get to the point where they had to get a warrant?”

The New York Times reported that federal prosecutors have sought interviews with people who worked in the White House at the very end of Trump’s term.

According to several reports, a DOJ counterintelligence and export control official visited Mar-a-Lago in connection with the records issue in the spring, along with a team of FBI agents.

“NARA tried, there were negotiations with his lawyers, and they still didn’t get a lot of documents back,” Weismann added. “So that gets at the sense that this was a purposeful act on the part of Trump.”

Weismann added that, while at CREW, she filed a number of lawsuits about the Trump White House’s record retention policy, including one petition for a judge to enjoin Trump from “leaving office with all these documents.”

“We said this is happening! And nothing happened,” she said.

[LFC]

DeJoy (I can't believe that asshole is still in the USPS) said he couldn't afford electric vehicles without more money. The Democrats' climate bill just allocated an additional $3B for exactly that purpose.

The US Senate has allocated $3 billion in additional funding to the US Postal Service for electrification of the nation’s delivery fleet, as part of yesterday’s massive climate bill. It’s the latest move in the long saga for postal service electrification and effectively “calls USPS’s bluff” by supplying as much funding as the USPS claimed a 100% BEV fleet would cost.

For years now, people have been calling for the USPS to electrify the delivery fleet. The nation’s gas-powered Grumman LLVs have been in service for more than 30 years now and desperately need an update.

Electric vehicles are perfect for mail delivery in many ways, providing quiet and clean operation to reduce disruption to neighborhoods, regenerative braking for constant stop-and-go driving, high low-end torque for heavy loads, and no need to idle while stationary. Electric vehicles are also cheaper to run and maintain, which is important for a massive fleet of hundreds of thousands of vehicles.

Finally, and most importantly, electric trucks produce fewer global warming emissions, which is necessary to combat the climate crisis we are currently facing.

[LFC]

Oh, Donald. What did you do to warrant this visit?

DOJ Counterintel Official Visited Mar-a-Lago

One of the more intriguing nuggets from the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago has to do with something that took place in June.

Then, CNN reported, four investigators visited Trump’s residence, briefly meeting the former President himself. Among others, they included Jay Bratt, the head of the DOJ’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section.

That’s drawn much attention, in part because of the counterintelligence risks inherent in Trump hoarding a stash of classified material. It’s still not clear what classified “national security” records those were: was it only letters with Kim Jong Un, as has been reported? Or something more than memorabilia?

Bratt’s section is in charge of a range of important matters within the DOJ’s National Security Division.

It includes, per the department, “cases affecting national security, foreign relations, and the export of military and strategic commodities and technology,” and for cases relating to criminal statutes having to do with “espionage, sabotage, neutrality, and atomic energy.”

There’s one other area that Bratt’s office oversees: the Foreign Agents Registration Act. FARA requires representatives of foreign governments to declare their activities with the DOJ. It’s the statute that ensnared Paul Manafort, after he failed to register on behalf of the Ukrainian government.

It’s completely unclear which area of Bratt’s responsibility might relate to the FBI’s Trump investigation. But given what national security matters his section is charged with overseeing, it’s certainly significant that he personally went to Mar-a-Lago.

[andydp]

This is pure speculation but it sure fits the modus operandi.

An author who ghostwrote one of Trump's books speculates Trump may've taken White House documents to one day sell as presidential memorabilia

A man who helped Donald Trump write a book has a theory why Trump may've taken White House records.  Charles Leerhsen speculated Trump might've taken documents to sell as "presidential memorabilia."  "If there's a grift to be grifted, he's gonna grift it," Leerhsen told Newsweek.


news.yahoo.com/author-helped-donald-trump-ghostwrite-045456880.html

[LFC]

Aug 10, 2022 11:23:26 GMT andydp said:

A man who helped Donald Trump write a book has a theory why Trump may've taken White House records.  Charles Leerhsen speculated Trump might've taken documents to sell as "presidential memorabilia."  "If there's a grift to be grifted, he's gonna grift it," Leerhsen told Newsweek.

Welcome to Occam's Razor.

[LFC]

One of Pennsylvania's lead fascists had his cell phone taken the very next day. He whined that no attempt to make arrangements to get the phone were made. Clearly they didn't trust him to retain all of the information on it.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) told Fox News that the FBI seized his cell phone this morning. In a statement, Perry said that three FBI agents approached him while he was traveling with his family. The agents gave him a warrant and requested that he turn over his phone, Perry said.

“They made no attempt to contact my lawyer, who would have made arrangements for them to have my phone if that was their wish. I’m outraged — though not surprised — that the FBI under the direction of Merrick Garland’s DOJ, would seize the phone of a sitting Member of Congress,” Perry said in his statement shared with Fox News.

Perry said that information on his phone related to his legislative and political activities, as well as personal/private discussions with family members and friends, are not “the government’s business.”

That’s all, of course, ignoring the fact that Perry, who leads the House Freedom Caucus, has boosted the former president’s baseless claims of widespread election fraud in the 2020 election. Perry was among the group of Trump allies who attempted to decertify Joe Biden’s electoral victory on Jan 6.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), vice chair of the Jan. 6 Select Committee, revealed during a public hearing in June that Perry had sought a pardon from Trump for his involvement in the broader MAGAworld attempts to overturn the election.

[LFC]

They hauled away another 10 boxes. So with the initial 15 plus stuff he actually did hand over we're over 25 boxes of stolen information. "But her emails!"

Feds Hauled Away 10 More Boxes From Mar-a-Lago That National Archives Didn’t Previously Retrieve

Some new details on last night’s raid: Mar-a-Lago was reportedly raided yesterday because federal agents believed there was additional classified information there that had not been retrieved by the National Archives, which had obtained more than a dozen boxes from the former president’s resort earlier this year, people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal.

Trump was in New York when feds raided Mar-a-Lago. Federal agents walked away with roughly 10 more boxes after searching the resort, a person with knowledge of the operation told WSJ.

The development came two months after DOJ lawyers, including an official who oversees investigations related to classified information, visited Mar-a-Lago to seek more information about potentially sensitive records that were allegedly transported from the White House after Trump left office.

Two months. Did Trump lie to the FBI? Did he steal and then cover up the theft of classified information? If this was any regular person they'd already be in prison.

[LFC]

Now they're attempting the defense that there wasn't anything classified because Trump "verbally declassified" it all. That helps with the fact that no paperwork was filed to do so. We should just trust him.

A set of questions is coming into clearer view following the FBI searches at Mar-a-Lago on Monday: Were there classified records at former President Donald Trump’s residence? And, if so, what were they?

The answer to those questions alone wouldn’t necessarily reveal the extent of the alleged wrongdoing. Federal law prohibits the theft of government property, for example, regardless of whether the material is classified or not.

But the question of whether Trump mishandled classified national security information has gained new intensity following a Wall Street Journal report Tuesday afternoon that the FBI removed 10 boxes of material from Mar-a-Lago on Monday in a search for classified material.

It will be interesting to see just how bad this is. Apparently the FBI thought the stolen documents were pretty important. For the past several months, Trump and those around him have thrown up various forms of chaff having to do with questions of classification.

It came after the National Archives told House Oversight Committee chair Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) in a February letter that it had identified “classified national security information” within 15 boxes of records that Trump turned over to the archives in January. Those boxes were full of presidential records that Trump had improperly taken with him from the White House.

It’s not clear what records “classified national security information” may refer to, though some experts suggested that the level of classification — combined with the apparent urgency of the FBI’s Monday searches — suggest it may have been something serious.

Kash Patel with the swing and a miss.

As this all took place, one Trump loyalist who the former President empowered to negotiate with NARA over the matter made a little-noticed public assertion: Trump had already declassified everything that was at Mar-a-Lago — verbally.

“The White House counsel failed to generate the paperwork to change the classification markings, but that doesn’t mean the information wasn’t declassified,” Kash Patel, a former staffer for Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) and, briefly, a Pentagon employee, told Breitbart in May.

“I was there with President Trump when he said ‘We are declassifying this information,'” Patel added.

Per a 2009 executive order, markings on classified material need to be updated to reflect changes in their status.

“At a minimum they would have to be marked as unclassified,” Weismann, the former CREW attorney, told TPM.

[goldenvalley]

Is it that simple?  A president says de-classify and voila! they are declassified. No wonder people want to president...to have such unlimited powers...if the president does it, it is legal.  

[AnBr]

Aug 9, 2022 17:45:18 GMT LFC said:

DeJoy (I can't believe that asshole is still in the USPS) said he couldn't afford electric vehicles without more money. The Democrats' climate bill just allocated an additional $3B for exactly that purpose.

The US Senate has allocated $3 billion in additional funding to the US Postal Service for electrification of the nation’s delivery fleet, as part of yesterday’s massive climate bill. It’s the latest move in the long saga for postal service electrification and effectively “calls USPS’s bluff” by supplying as much funding as the USPS claimed a 100% BEV fleet would cost.

For years now, people have been calling for the USPS to electrify the delivery fleet. The nation’s gas-powered Grumman LLVs have been in service for more than 30 years now and desperately need an update.

Electric vehicles are perfect for mail delivery in many ways, providing quiet and clean operation to reduce disruption to neighborhoods, regenerative braking for constant stop-and-go driving, high low-end torque for heavy loads, and no need to idle while stationary. Electric vehicles are also cheaper to run and maintain, which is important for a massive fleet of hundreds of thousands of vehicles.

Finally, and most importantly, electric trucks produce fewer global warming emissions, which is necessary to combat the climate crisis we are currently facing.

And as others have found that electric fleets have a longer lifespan.

[LFC]

Aug 10, 2022 13:40:18 GMT goldenvalley said:

Is it that simple?  A president says de-classify and voila! they are declassified. No wonder people want to president...to have such unlimited powers...if the president does it, it is legal.  

Almost. A procedure is in place that documents the decision and marks the pertinent documents as to their proper classification. None of this was done so Patel if full of shit. Well, I shouldn't speak so quickly. This could go to the Supreme Court where new and innovative ways of giving Republicans what they want are being developed and released all the time.

[LFC]

Trump's lawyers jump right to the conspiracy theory without hesitation.

A+ Lawyerings

To hear Alina Habba, one of Trump’s defense lawyers, explain it: The FBI probably planted incriminating evidence when agents raided the ex-president’s Mar-a-Lago resort on Monday, but also the raid was a wild goose chase and Trump doesn’t have anything incriminating at Mar-a-Lago.

• “Quite honestly, I’m concerned that they may have planted something,” Habba told Fox News on Tuesday night. “At this point, who knows?”

• Christina Bobb, another Trump defense lawyer and former OAN host (RIP), on the other hand, doesn’t “necessarily think that they would even go to the extent of” planting anything because “they just make stuff up and come up with whatever they want,” even though “[t]here’s just nothing there.”

[LFC]

[goldenvalley]

Aug 10, 2022 15:03:00 GMT LFC said:

Aug 10, 2022 13:40:18 GMT goldenvalley said:

Is it that simple?  A president says de-classify and voila! they are declassified. No wonder people want to president...to have such unlimited powers...if the president does it, it is legal.  

Almost. A procedure is in place that documents the decision and marks the pertinent documents as to their proper classification. None of this was done so Patel if full of shit. Well, I shouldn't speak so quickly. This could go to the Supreme Court where new and innovative ways of giving Republicans what they want are being developed and released all the time.

Still there are rules to follow.  Trump has been told that about presidential record retention dating back to the earliest days of being in office.  Remember the staff trying to tape documents together that should have been kept?  He choses to ignore it all.  

[LFC]

Aug 10, 2022 15:18:37 GMT goldenvalley said:

Still there are rules to follow.

Oh, that's so cute when it's a Republican that's involved.

[goldenvalley]

Trump and his generals....an excerpt of a book about the topic.   General Kelly knew exactly what is wrong...why oh why did he not realize this situation was bigger than his chain of command was built to handle?  I'm not referring to Trump not wanting cripples in his grand never done military parade.  I mean all the other nonsense.  Same with Mad Dog Mattis. Note to all who work in any presidential administration, when you see the commander in chief who is incapable of understanding his job or of doing it tell us. If you see something, say something.

[pnwguy]

Aug 11, 2022 0:20:49 GMT goldenvalley said:

Trump and his generals....an excerpt of a book about the topic.   General Kelly knew exactly what is wrong...why oh why did he not realize this situation was bigger than his chain of command was built to handle?  I'm not referring to Trump not wanting cripples in his grand never done military parade.  I mean all the other nonsense.  Same with Mad Dog Mattis. Note to all who work in any presidential administration, when you see the commander in chief who is incapable of understanding his job or of doing it tell us. If you see something, say something.

Or develop their own version of Operation Valkyrie

[LFC]

Trump is only paranoid if people really ARE out to get him. My guess is that somebody was, and did.

Trump Paranoid Someone’s Snitching On Him

The ex-president is anxious that there’s a “rat” in his inner circle feeding intel on him to the feds and that people, including Republicans visiting his clubs, are wearing a wire around him, according to Rolling Stone.

• Trump has been privately expressing his fears since May, even before the Mar-a-Lago raid on Monday, per Rolling Stone.

• Trump’s also reportedly worried that his phones are tapped “by Biden,” in his own words.

• But the former president apparently isn’t wrong to be freaking out about a potential mole: Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal report that the FBI was tipped off about the classified documents Trump had stashed at Mar-a-Lago, leading to the raid.

• Key analysis: “Citizen Trump may have broken a law that President Trump made a felony” – The Washington Post

[LFC]

This sounds like a worthwhile cause for a GoFundMe campaign.

A Florida man spared no expense to fly a banner reading “ha ha ha ha ha ha” over Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate Wednesday after an FBI raid of the property. Trump critic Thomas Kennedy, from Miami, joined together with a group of friends to have the mocking message flown over the former president’s palatial home as crowds of MAGA fans demonstrated in Palm Beach for a third straight day. “Honestly, go do something better with your time,” Kennedy said to the Trump fans in an interview with NBC 6. He added that he and his friends had paid $1,800 to fly the banner, which was in the skies around South Florida for about three hours. “It brought me a lot of joy to do so,” Kennedy said. “I would do it again.”

[LFC]

Trump was served with a subpoena back in May. He chose to ignore it. Oh, well.

Justice Department investigators had served Donald Trump a subpoena in the spring, months before the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago estate in search of potentially classified documents the former president may not have handed over, sources familiar with the matter confirmed to The New York Times. During a June visit in connection with the subpoena, the FBI searched a storage locker on the Florida property where Trump housed all of his presidential memorabilia, and the ex-president also handed over surveillance footage of the locker. Federal officials left with several boxes of materials that reportedly belonged to special access programs and were thought to have been “improperly” taken from the White House. The Monday search was reportedly for documents related to national security that the National Archives and the Justice Department believed Trump still hadn’t returned. Sources with knowledge of the material said the documents were extremely sensitive and federal investigators felt it necessary to claw them back immediately. Trump’s fiercest supporters have decried the FBI raid as unwarranted and politically motivated.