Trump Administration - Festering Skidmarks

[Bact PhD]

Garland has asked the court to unseal the warrant. Shit’s getting even more real.

www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/11/garland-trump-mar-a-lago/

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Thursday that the Justice Department has filed a motion for a judge to unseal the court-authorized warrant that led FBI agents to search the Florida residence of former president Donald Trump.


Garland, noting the “substantial” public interest in the matter, said he personally authorized the request for a search warrant and decided to file the motion to unseal since Trump had confirmed to the public that the FBI raided his property on Monday.

[LFC]

Here's a summary of what's going on in Trumpland.

With the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago this week, former President Donald Trump is at one of his lowest moments since he left office.

After fighting off a subpoena for half a year, Trump was finally forced to testify on Wednesday at a closed-door deposition with New York Attorney General Letitia James over allegations of bank and insurance fraud at his family company—a civil case which could force it to close shop.

He pleaded the Fifth, still a self-incriminating tactic for a man who, during his 2016 presidential campaign, once declared: “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” While the move may spare him of criminal liability, it will only bolster the AG’s case in civil court, where staying silent can legally be perceived as damning evidence of its own.

The prospect of another long and damaging trial is also hanging over the Trump Organization and the ex-president’s former right-hand money man, Allen Weisselberg. According to Duncan Levin, an attorney representing a witness in that case, prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office are currently preparing eyewitness testimony for an upcoming criminal trial over the company’s scheme to dodge taxes on personal perks.

Weisselberg will be in court on Friday.

The Fulton County district attorney is also ramping up her investigation of Trump’s menacing phone call to the top elections official in Georgia last year, with a special purpose grand jury that is dragging witnesses behind closed doors in preparation for an official report that could pave the way to a criminal indictment for violating state laws.

Trump campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani will be there next Wednesday, according to a source familiar.

The House’s Jan. 6 Committee is also continuing its investigation, after already documenting how Trump tried to subvert the American democratic system and remain in power. The committee has fired warning shots at Trump himself for engaging in what could be described as witness tampering, threatening to refer him to the Justice Department because he allegedly reached out to at least one former staffer before their congressional testimony. And members are expertly making the case to the public that Trump obstructed an official proceeding of Congress.

The widely watched hearings resume next month.

On Tuesday, after losing a bitter legal fight with a pissed-off staffer, Trump’s 2016 campaign revealed in court documents that it has been notifying ex-employees that they are freed from their once-ironclad nondisclosure agreements.

They’re now free to dish about any of Trump’s misdeeds.

An appellate court also ruled on Tuesday that the House Ways and Means Committee is entitled to review Trump’s tax returns—the crown jewels that Democrats have been seeking for half a decade to prove that the billionaire has always lied about his wealth, assets, and how much he pays in taxes.

Trump’s taxes might soon get their own congressional hearings.

And then there is the most threatening development of all: the sudden appearance of FBI agents at Trump’s Palm Beach mansion. More than two days later, the raid is still shrouded in mystery, mostly because Trump won’t reveal details about the warrant his lawyers were given.

Alan Douchewitz just couldn't help himself.

Dershowitz, who criticized the FBI’s historic move as “hard to justify,” said Trump’s criminal defense lawyers should have been more combative and attempted to loudly and publicly halt the search.

“He has to be very aggressive, and he has to go to court, and he has to not trust negotiations with the Justice Department. He has to seek injunctions. He has to seek to have a special master appointed to look at the docs,” Dershowitz told The Daily Beast on Tuesday. “There should have been a lawyer in front of a judge at 10 a.m. yesterday.”

The danger to Trump personally is severe. Violating the Presidential Records Act, a little-known and seldom cited law, comes with the implausible risk of prison time but the very real threat of barring him from ever being elected again.

Anyone who willfully conceals, removes, or destroys any presidential records—or even attempts to do so—is “disqualified from holding any office under the United States.”

John W. Carlin, who led the National Archives for a decade during the Clinton and Bush II administrations, said the Justice Department was right to become “much more aggressive.”

[LFC]

Nuclear ... f***ing ... weapons.

WaPo: FBI Searched Trump Resort For Classified Nuclear Docs

The Washington Post has a breaking new development this evening that’s worth your attention:

Classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought in a search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence on Monday, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Read the full piece here.

[pnwguy]

Aug 12, 2022 11:19:47 GMT LFC said:

Nuclear ... f***ing ... weapons.

WaPo: FBI Searched Trump Resort For Classified Nuclear Docs

The Washington Post has a breaking new development this evening that’s worth your attention:


Read the full piece here.

"If I didn't have these documents, the corrupt Marxist Democrats would be selling them to illegal aliens so they could breach my big beautiful wall with nuclear weapons and invade our country"

[Traveler]

Douchewitz wrote a breathless article about they should have subpoenaed the documents. Idiot. They had done so month ago, and the dump stonewalled. Talk about foot in mouth disease. Vile creature.

[indy]

So according to WSJ and now the internet, the search warrant mentions 18 U.S.C. 793

[indy]

Aug 12, 2022 19:23:04 GMT Traveler said:

Douchewitz wrote a breathless article about they should have subpoenaed the documents. Idiot. They had done so month ago, and the dump stonewalled. Talk about foot in mouth disease. Vile creature.

Traveler...good to see you, where you been?

[Traveler]

Well, I got burned out with all the bad news kept coming. Klain and the progs are a bunch of effing idiots. And just don't have much time these days. My business has taken off. Now have a staff of 4 under me, plus CEO, COO, and CFO to keep all the finance and operations going. I am CTO. Have to design $40+m in projects over next few months and the figure out how to deliver.

But I missed you guys, and glad to see most of you still here.

[goldenvalley]

Aug 12, 2022 20:19:53 GMT Traveler said:

Well, I got burned out with all the bad news kept coming. Klain and the progs are a bunch of effing idiots. And just don't have much time these days. My business has taken off. Now have a staff of 4 under me, plus CEO, COO, and CFO to keep all the finance and operations going. I am CTO. Have to design $40+m in projects over next few months and the figure out how to deliver.

But I missed you guys, and glad to see most of you still here.

Glad to see you and congrats on your business success!   

[LFC]

TPM's reporting. This is some serious shit.

After a week of attacking the Justice Department, claiming victimhood, and offering nonsensical defenses of the classified documents that were apparently still residing in his seaside resort post-presidency, Donald Trump appeared to selectively leak search warrant documents ahead of formally agreeing that a judge could unseal the documents in a court record.

The documents, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, showed that FBI agents recovered more classified materials from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort during their Monday search, including one set of documents marked as “Various classified/TS/SCI documents.”

The “SCI” acronym stands for sensitive compartmented information, among the most sensitive classified materials the U.S. government possesses.

In addition, a “Receipt for Property” listed four entries for “Miscellaneous Top Secret Documents,” three sets of secret documents, and three more sets of confidential documents. Other items were more descriptive: “Executive Grant of Clemency re: Roger Jason Stone, Jr.” and “Info re: President of France” are among the list entries, as are two binders of photos, a handwritten note, and 21 entries noting various labeled boxes.

The document was signed as received by Christina Bobb, a lawyer working for Trump and an anchor on the far-right One America News Network.

The warrant stated that Mar-a-Lago would be searched for any evidence of violations of the three criminal laws, all under Title 18 of the U.S. Code: The Espionage Act; Section 1519, an obstruction statute that covers concealing or destroying documents; and Section 2071, which concerns unlawfully removing or concealing records.

[Bact PhD]

Aug 12, 2022 20:19:53 GMT Traveler said:

Well, I got burned out with all the bad news kept coming. Klain and the progs are a bunch of effing idiots. And just don't have much time these days. My business has taken off. Now have a staff of 4 under me, plus CEO, COO, and CFO to keep all the finance and operations going. I am CTO. Have to design $40+m in projects over next few months and the figure out how to deliver.

But I missed you guys, and glad to see most of you still here.

We missed you, too! Glad that your absence was owing to an abundance of good stuff happening — Congrats that the biz is taking off!

Swing around as you’re able, and (to quote the old ad) we’ll keep the light on for ya.

[LFC]

TPM's 5 points on the Trump situation right before the warrant was released.  The upshot? Republicans are f***ing vile creatures who care nothing about reality.

When former President Donald Trump first announced the FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago residence, many Republican lawmakers rhetorically rushed to his side.

“The Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) reeled off.

“DEFUND THE FBI!” cried Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).

They called for “answers,” for documentation on the specifics of the raid from the DOJ.

And then…Attorney General Merrick Garland promised just that. On Thursday afternoon, Garland said that the department would seek a partial release of the Mar-a-Lago search warrant.

Record scratch. Would Trump change his position? It would be many uncomfortable hours for Republicans before Trump said he was “ENCOURAGING” the release of the warrant — something he could do himself at any time.

Meanwhile, Trump allies are reportedly telling Republican lawmakers to tamp down the firestorm of criticism they’re training on the DOJ and FBI due to the possibility that more damaging information related to the search will become public, per the New York Times.

While we wait for the warrant to be released, Republicans are shooting scattershot in their attempt to shift scrutiny from the venerated leader of the party.

The first one is pure Republican. Every time they get what they demand and it doesn't say what they want it to they change their demands and shove the previous demand down the memory hole. Now, of course, they're asking for things the DOJ would never give out in the midst of an ongoing investigation, especially to a crew of fascists who would leak and trumpet things that are not to be released.

1  Shifting the goalposts away from demanding the warrant

After Garland inconveniently acceded to Republican requests that the warrant be unsealed, some Republicans cast around for something else to demand. Many have landed on the information that prompted the search in the first place.

“What I am looking for is the predicate for the search,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) tweeted shortly after Garland’s speech. “Was the information provided to the judge sufficient and necessary to authorize a raid on the former president’s home within ninety days of the midterm election?”

Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, sang a similar tune at a Friday morning press conference, asking that the “imminent national security risk” that prompted the raid be disclosed to the committee.

“These questions will still remain unanswered” even after the warrant is unsealed, he predicted confidently.

[LFC]

This (paywalled) amused me. Bold major amusement mine.

Into the Storm

We are, we might say, deep in the thick of it. Until recently we heard constantly how there was no accountability for the ex-President, no investigations or prosecutions, of anything tied to the denouement of the Trump presidency, save for the men who actually entered the Capitol complex on January 6th. Now we learn that there are and have been multiple investigations touching on various incidents tied to the end of the Trump presidency. There was a bunch of frothy and nonsensical chatter earlier in the week about how the FBI had just given the presidency back to Donald Trump. This morning the House Freedom Caucus, ground zero of Trumpism and coup plotting, canceled the press conference they had planned to bewail the FBI search of the ex-President’s home. Facts change and you have to react to them.

It is probably best to say that we are back in one of those fugue windows Trump Republicans have, much like January 7th-9th 2021, in which there’s a period of relative silence while a story is devised to explain why something inexplicable and indefensible is in fact awesome and totally fine. They’ll get there.

I will tell you what I told a friend a couple days ago about the Mar-a-Lago search. None of it matters. I didn’t mean the raid itself doesn’t matter. I wasn’t saying whatever the FBI agents were looking for wouldn’t matter. I have no idea. But the particular predicate and exigencies of the search or the decision to carry it out was never going to matter to the outcome of the 2022 election. Only the myopia of political commentators who read events of the day like entrails to divine the future would think otherwise. The population of voters who aren’t already hating or loving Trump and are going to be shifted in their political or electoral calculus by the relative merits of a court ordered search warrant don’t amount to a dozen people in the whole country.

People sometimes have a hard time not thinking stupid things.

I’m not going to try to predict what the outcome of these various probes will be or why on earth Donald Trump might have been, if he was, keeping highly classified nuclear weapons related materials at his Palm Beach resort. Truly, WTF? But one point is already clear enough. Republicans have rightly tried for most of the last six months to keep Donald Trump, literally and figuratively, out of the midterms. He’s now returned with a vengeance. They have no choice but defend him. To the hilt. It’s the bargain they struck with him years ago. That’s bad news for Republicans. Coming on top of much else that has happened over the summer, that development shifts the election from a referendum on Joe Biden and the generally upended and crappy state of the economy and world to a choice election between Democrats and Republicans who are identified with Donald Trump.

I’m not saying that means the Democrats will have a good election necessarily. But it’s a bad development for Republicans. There’s no getting around that.

[LFC]

Trump claimed Obama did the same thing. He lied.

www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/aug/12/donald-trump/why-trump-wrong-suggest-obama-personally-kept-33-m/

[andydp]

...and the hits just keep on coming

(Note this is conjecture on the speaker's part)

Ex-Clinton aide implies 'President of France' file found at Trump's home during Mar-a-Lago raid could be valuable to Putin as 'kompromat'

A former Hillary Clinton aide heavily implied that former President Donald Trump had dirt on the French president and that it could be useful to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Fox News reported.

Jennifer Palmieri, who was the director of communications for Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, did not mention Trump or Putin by name.

But a tweet, shared on Friday night, suggested that information on French President Emmanuel Macron, which was found during the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago, could be maliciously used by a world leader.

www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ex-clinton-aide-implies-president-of-france-file-found-at-trump-s-home-during-mar-a-lago-raid-could-be-valuable-to-putin-as-kompromat/ar-AA10Cr01?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=4b4d5abee6234ba395d5fd7453d728ea

[AnBr]

www.thedailybeast.com/florida-man-pays-dollar1800-to-fly-ha-ha-ha-banner-over-trumps-mar-a-lago-after-fbi-raid

[LFC]

Josh Marshall reports on the latest excuse attempt by the Trump supporters. His diagnosis is that they are in full blown panic right about now since what he did is clearly indefensible. I would like to note that John Solomon mentioned below is the same John Solomon who helped spread piles of Hunter Biden bullshit and ended up being booted from and having his articles taken down by The Hill.

Some interesting and absurd but still noteworthy events overnight. Trump’s representatives, at least for the moment, have settled on a story which is that he had a “standing order” that any and all classified materials he took home with him to the White House residence was “deemed” declassified. So in fact, none of the materials in question are classified and none of it matters. This was announced on Fox as an official statement from Trump’s office by John Solomon, the notorious fake news hustler who is now operating as Trump’s “designated representative” to the National Archives.

Statement from Trump Office: As we can all relate to, everyone ends up having to bring home their work from time to time… He had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office taken to the residence were deemed to be declassified.. pic.twitter.com/pnTjRnOqif
— Acyn (@acyn) August 13, 2022

The best I can draw from this is that the ex-President and his entourage are in a state of implosive panic over the events of the last 72 hours. There was certainly no such “standing order”, which will become clear in short order. This also isn’t the way classification works. All classification authority stems from the will and authority of the President. So President’s can declassify anything they want – with the exception of certain nuclear secrets even President’s can’t declassify. But the President still has to go through certain procedures. There’s a court case confirming this point from as recently as, I believe, 2019.

We should not lose ourselves in the logic of this inane claim – a fake claim of authority (in pectore declassification) wrapped in a demonstrable lie (the standing order). What is more noteworthy is that these are the claims of someone who is not getting any legal advice. Not bad legal advice. No legal advice. At present Trump is represented by two women, one an unknown lawyer from New Jersey and another a former OAN host. But I don’t think this is even coming from them. These sound like panicked claims of someone improvising without the benefit of legal counsel. What I draw from this is that the real facts of the case are likely worse than they appear.

This doesn’t mean necessarily that the ex-President is in grave legal peril. What it tells me – pulling all these indications together – is that the President’s actions are impossible to defend. Why was he refusing to relinquish material the US government thought so sensitive and secret that they had little choice but to seize them at the first opportunity?

The other measure of this is the reaction from Republican elected officials over the last 48 hours, which as near as I can tell is total silence. It’s hard to march without marching orders and Trump is giving them very little to go on about what the facts are and what the bases are for defending him.

[AnBr]

[indy]

Aug 12, 2022 20:19:53 GMT Traveler said:

Well, I got burned out with all the bad news kept coming. Klain and the progs are a bunch of effing idiots. And just don't have much time these days. My business has taken off. Now have a staff of 4 under me, plus CEO, COO, and CFO to keep all the finance and operations going. I am CTO. Have to design $40+m in projects over next few months and the figure out how to deliver.

But I missed you guys, and glad to see most of you still here.

Sounds like things are going gangbusters. Congratulations!

Yeah, it can be a bit hard to take all the political craziness. Breaks are good.

[Traveler]

Thanks all,

Great to see the old gang cranking along. FWIW, I hang out at Bloomberg, but not all that much. Ukraine is seriously attention grabbing.

You know, when all this started with "Waterloo" we thought the world was going to hell in a handbasket? Always hoping to turn the corner? At least me. Yet here we are. Not much good news since then, no? Corners might finally be starting to turn?

[goldenvalley]

Aug 15, 2022 23:55:02 GMT Traveler said:

Thanks all,

Great to see the old gang cranking along. FWIW, I hang out at Bloomberg, but not all that much. Ukraine is seriously attention grabbing.

You know, when all this started with "Waterloo" we thought the world was going to hell in a handbasket? Always hoping to turn the corner? At least me. Yet here we are. Not much good news since then, no? Corners might finally be starting to turn?

My crystal ball is cracked and cloudy...has been since 2015.  Trying to predict what will come next is exhausting and so far essentially pointless.  We're in unchartered waters. So I gave up prognostication or even on hoping that corners will be turned. I just want to keep an eye what's happening and see if there is something local that I can do to at least protect my little corner.

[Bact PhD]

Aug 16, 2022 0:49:43 GMT goldenvalley said:

Aug 15, 2022 23:55:02 GMT Traveler said:

Thanks all,

Great to see the old gang cranking along. FWIW, I hang out at Bloomberg, but not all that much. Ukraine is seriously attention grabbing.

You know, when all this started with "Waterloo" we thought the world was going to hell in a handbasket? Always hoping to turn the corner? At least me. Yet here we are. Not much good news since then, no? Corners might finally be starting to turn?

My crystal ball is cracked and cloudy...has been since 2015.  Trying to predict what will come next is exhausting and so far essentially pointless.  We're in unchartered waters. So I gave up prognostication or even on hoping that corners will be turned. I just want to keep an eye what's happening and see if there is something local that I can do to at least protect my little corner.

Agreed Re the utter inability to prognosticate; my tarot deck is in tatters. However, here in Flori-DUH we have a Supreme Emperor who is itching to change his address to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. My little island is besieged as it is, and the power of local government to resist is both limited and dwindling quickly. It’s a bit disconcerting to know your part of the world is responsible for what could wind up being “Mango Mussolini 2.0.”

[LFC]

So who actually provided false information to the FBI, DOJ, or both? Was it Trump who lied or was it his lawyer? That's a serious federal crime. Is she willing to take the fall, possibly be prosecuted, and possibly (probably?) be disbarred?

More Classified Docs

One of Trump’s attorneys signed a document in June claiming (falsely) that there weren’t any more classified materials stashed at the ex-president’s Mar-a-Lago club, according to the New York Times, CNN and CBS News.

• The written declaration came after Justice Department officials went to Mar-a-Lago on June 3 to meet with two of the ex-president’s attorneys and collect classified documents there, the Times and CBS News report. Those lawyers were M. Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, but we don’t know which Trump attorney signed the reported declaration (and those two aren’t Trump’s only lawyers).

• The FBI seized 11 sets of classified documents in the Mar-a-Lago raid last week.

Also note the phrase that there "weren't any more." That certainly sounds like a crime was committed with the prior records that were, at least, surrendered more or less willingly.

[LFC]

Trump's CFO is taking a plea deal but won't cooperate.

Allen Weisselberg, who served as the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, has reportedly reached a plea deal in the Manhattan district attorney’s criminal tax fraud investigation into the Trump Organization.

CBS News reported on Tuesday that Weisselberg had clinched the deal, a day after the New York Times first reported that the ex-CFO was nearing an agreement with prosecutors, and planned to plead guilty to a years-long tax fraud scheme – for which the Trump Organization was indicted as well.

However, the Trump Organization is not expected to take a plea deal like the former executive, and the case is expected to move forward to trial with jury selection in October.

CBS News also confirmed other reports that Weisselberg is expected to be handed a five-month prison sentence as part of the agreement.

However, Weisselberg, having stubbornly resisted prosecutors’ efforts to get him to flip on ex-President Donald Trump all throughout the criminal case, will reportedly not cooperate with the Manhattan DA’s investigation into the former president.

[goldenvalley]

Aug 17, 2022 2:46:27 GMT LFC said:

Trump's CFO is taking a plea deal but won't cooperate.

Allen Weisselberg, who served as the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, has reportedly reached a plea deal in the Manhattan district attorney’s criminal tax fraud investigation into the Trump Organization.

CBS News reported on Tuesday that Weisselberg had clinched the deal, a day after the New York Times first reported that the ex-CFO was nearing an agreement with prosecutors, and planned to plead guilty to a years-long tax fraud scheme – for which the Trump Organization was indicted as well.

However, the Trump Organization is not expected to take a plea deal like the former executive, and the case is expected to move forward to trial with jury selection in October.

CBS News also confirmed other reports that Weisselberg is expected to be handed a five-month prison sentence as part of the agreement.

However, Weisselberg, having stubbornly resisted prosecutors’ efforts to get him to flip on ex-President Donald Trump all throughout the criminal case, will reportedly not cooperate with the Manhattan DA’s investigation into the former president.

Weisselberg's photo will appear in the dictionary next to the word "loyalty."   The Trump Org must have treated he and his family really, really well over the years.