Shit gets real for Donnie

[Lov2fish]

Originally Posted by JAFF

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/10/polit...aud/index.html

The attorney discipline arm of the DC Bar has brought a case against Rudy Giuliani for pushing unsubstantiated election fraud accusations in a Pennsylvania federal court on behalf of Donald Trump after the 2020 election.

The disciplinary office filing, called a charge, further puts Giuliani's status as a lawyer in jeopardy. Giuliani had already been suspended from practicing law by the New York bar as that office also investigates his election fraud efforts on behalf of Trump in court.
In the new filing from the DC bar, Giuliani is accused of violating Pennsylvania's Rules of Professional Conduct.
Former Fox political editor says he will testify at January 6 committee hearing
Former Fox political editor says he will testify at January 6 committee hearing
He did so, the filing said, in that he "brought a proceeding and asserted issues therein without a non-frivolous basis in law and fact for doing so" and "engaged in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice."
CNN reached out to Giuliani/s attorney but did not receive a response to its inquiry about the ethics charges.
The filing is the beginning of the process for Giuliani to have his license revoked or suspended in DC, separate from the disciplinary action he had already received from the New York bar while it investigates the professional misconduct allegations against him.
In the Pennsylvania case, the new disciplinary filings allege that Giuliani sought to "leverage the lawful rejection of two ballots by non-defendant counties into invalidating up to 1.5 million votes already counted."
The DC Bar charges, filed by Disciplinary Counsel Hamilton Fox, allege that there was no "legal basis" for the constitutional claims Giuliani pursued in the Pennsylvania litigation.
The election challenge in question was a lawsuit filed days after the 2020 election in a Pennsylvania federal court on behalf of the Trump campaign. At oral arguments in the case, Giuliani claimed without evidence that the "best description of this situation is it's widespread, nationwide voter fraud of which this is a part."
"The only place we have it happening en masse is in the Democrat -- heavily controlled counties that you can call counties controlled by a Democratic machine that have quite an impressive list of voter fraud convictions as part of their history and tradition. And all of the sudden, with this greater opportunity to do it, they did it on a grand scale," Giuliani said at the oral arguments, which were quoted in the new ethics charges from the DC Bar.
The disciplinary filings said that Giuliani had "cited to the district court as a basis for his fraud allegations several sources that could not, as a categorical matter, prove that" the defendants in the Pennsylvania case had "committed or facilitated election fraud during the 2020 election."
Giuliani also lacked evidence in his claims in the case that barriers erected at Pennsylvania vote-counting sites amounted to fraud, the new charging document said. Giuliani "should have known the 'evidence' he provided" in the case to claim mass fraud "relied upon false or faulty statistics and analysis."
Takeaways from the prime-time January 6 committee hearing
Takeaways from the prime-time January 6 committee hearing
Of the 300 affidavits Giuliani provided in the Pennsylvania case, the DC Bar charges said they were "(a) unsupported, (b) unrelated to Trump voters (c) involve conduct outside the seven Defendant Counties, and (d) by their own terms were isolated incidents that could not have affected the presidential election's results by offsetting the Biden majority of over 80,000 votes."
The disciplinary process against Giuliani will now move to a hearing phase where he will be able to respond to the allegations. The charges will first be put before what is known as a hearing committee, which can consider evidence and testimony. In contested proceedings, according to the DC Bar's website, the "Hearing Committee prepares a report and recommendation, with proposed findings of fact, conclusions of law, and a recommended sanction, which is filed with" the Bar's Board on Professional Responsibility.
The DC Court of Appeals has the ultimate authority over the bar's disciplinary proceedings, and the court reviews and approves any disciplinary actions that include the suspension or disbarment of an attorney accused of misconduct.

Nothing from any main stream media source is valid as fact. Sorry, they have taken away that assumption themselves the last decade when it went full on prime time comedy.

I know what sedation is, and even though January, 6th. was a shit show, it did not remotely meet the criteria to call it an insurrection. Liberalism is truly a mental disorder. Nobody can be that mentally dysfunctional without an underlying cause.

[JAFF]

Originally Posted by Lov2fish

Nothing from any main stream media source is valid as fact. Sorry, they have taken away that assumption themselves the last decade when it went full on prime time comedy.

I know what sedation is, and even though January, 6th. was a shit show, it did not remotely meet the criteria to call it an insurrection. Liberalism is truly a mental disorder. Nobody can be that mentally dysfunctional without an underlying cause.

They tried to stop a legal process to finalize the election, stopping the transfer of power, by creating a riot.

That is sedition. It is treason. And you can talk about a stone election yet not one solid piece of evidence has ever been put forward by the Republican Party in any forum.

As Bill Barr said, “its bullshit”

[JAFF]

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/11/opini...gen/index.html


Editor’s Note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. His new paperback is “The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World.” View more opinion on CNN.

CNN
—
Nick Quested, a British documentary filmmaker, testified on Thursday evening before the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection. I spoke with Quested on Friday. He told me that he wanted the public to understand the truth of what happened on January 6 and expressed worries that the riot could be a dress rehearsal for another attack on America’s constitutional order.

Quested, a producer of the Oscar-nominated Afghanistan War documentary, “Restrepo,” has worked on several other films on subjects ranging from the Mexican drug cartels to the rise of ISIS in Syria.

Vice Chair U.S. Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) participates at the opening public hearing of the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 9, 2022. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Opinion: Liz Cheney's huge moment
Quested and his producing partner Sebastian Junger became interested in the far-right group, the Proud Boys, and followed them in the weeks leading up to January 6. Quested, who captured key footage of the group during the attack at the Capitol, shared his work and his personal account of the events of that day during the committee’s first televised hearing.

He told me about the scenes of mayhem that he and his colleagues filmed that day, as well as the mysterious meeting between the leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, another far-right group, that took place in a Washington, DC, parking garage the night before the assault on the US Capitol.

Disclosure: I have appeared as an interviewee in one of Quested’s documentaries. Our interview was edited for clarity.

PETER BERGEN: Why did you decide to testify?

NICK QUESTED: Because we’re approaching living in a post-factual world, and I think it’s important that these facts about January 6 are brought to bear and in an unpartisan way, especially if we can use these hearings to make sure that something like this never happens again.

BERGEN: And you had a subpoena to appear before the committee?

QUESTED: I had a subpoena. I spoke to the authorities in an interview beforehand, but when they were using my work in the way that they did, I felt it was only appropriate for them to subpoena me.

BERGEN: Your work – did you just hand it over to them, or did they request it? How did that work?

QUESTED: Well as a journalist, having filmed what were potentially many crimes, I didn’t feel there was any journalistic jeopardy giving that to authorities. I called a friend who is a US Attorney, and I said, “Listen, I have filmed I don’t know how many crimes. What do you think I should do with this?” He said, “We’ll call the DC Criminal Division.” I was then referred to an agent from the FBI. And we still had to process the footage because we shoot very high-quality video, which needs to be processed. So, we did that and then I gave it to the FBI.

FILE - In this Jan. 6, 2021 photo, Donald Trump supporters participate in a rally in Washington, near the White House. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
Opinion: The big question about the January 6 hearings goes beyond Trump
BERGEN: On the morning of January 6th, what happened in terms of the Proud Boys?

QUESTED: I turned up on the National Mall around 10:30 am and the Proud Boys were already marching in an easterly direction towards the western side of the Capitol, and I immediately kicked into gear and started trying to cover the scene. I’m shooting a wide shot. I’m shooting long lens. I’m in the middle of the crowd with them. I’m shooting slow motion. I’m just trying to edit a sequence in my head, because I’ve done a lot of marching with these guys. They love marching up and down the Mall. We’d done that on December 12, 2020.

So I thought that’s what we were doing again. And we walked around the Capitol, and still they were marching. They’re singing their songs. It felt like hooligans at a soccer match. There were bawdy jokes. There’s sort of been an evolution in the Proud Boys, and at one point, people said that they were a drinking club with a political problem. I’d say they’re a political club with a drinking problem now.

And it wasn’t until that crowd moved near the barrier around the Capitol that I felt the world shift. At 12:54 pm, I feel the commotion and run over, and soon, the barriers are coming down and people are streaming forward and running towards the Capitol.

BERGEN: Were you frightened?

QUESTED: I wasn’t frightened at that point. But the language had started to change. There were more challenges to police to “respect their oath” and comments like, “We pay your wages. Do your job. Choose a side. Respect the oath.” And then people are starting to kick down the next fence. They’re starting to break up the fence and take pieces out of it to use as makeshift weapons, and it was different. It felt like some people were in rapture. It felt like a crusade, like they felt they were right, and they were unappreciative of the irony of using violence to overthrow a constitutionally elected body and justifying that violence by citing the Constitution.

BERGEN: Their interpretation of the Constitution.

QUESTED: Yeah.

BERGEN: How and when did you decide to profile the Proud Boys?

White House advisor Ivanka Trump listens to her father U.S. President Donald Trump deliver remarks on supporting small businesses through the Paycheck Protection Program in the East Room of the White House April 28, 2020 in Washington, DC. An total of $659 billion has been allocated for small business loans in coronavirus relief bills passed by Congress.
Trump claims daughter Ivanka 'checked out' and wasn't looking at election results
QUESTED: In the summer of 2020, I was chatting with the war reporter and my producing partner Sebastian Junger, and we were talking about the psyche of the country at that time. We were in the first few months of Covid-19. People were scared because they had no idea what this virus’ potential was. The hospitals were full. There was a hospital ship in the harbor in New York. The emergency rooms were overflowing. There were stories in the papers about pressure on the food supply and Covid ripping through meatpacking plants.

And then you have the murder of George Floyd, and you literally have medieval-style pitched battles in the cities of America. And we asked ourselves this question: Why is America so divided when Americans have so much in common?

So, we thought, let’s see what the far right has to say and what the far right and the far left actually have in common here. And we wanted to ask both sides: What does it mean to be American? If you can’t define it, then how can you find commonality, if there is commonality to be had here?

BERGEN: So, you reached out to the Proud Boys.

QUESTED: Yeah. We called up the Proud Boys. On November 4, 2020, when President Donald Trump falsely claimed that he won the election before a winner had been declared, we were like, “Oh, here you go.” Because one of the fundamental tenets of America is having a peaceful transfer of power. I called up Enrique Tarrio, the head of the Proud Boys. He liked the film “Restrepo” that war reporter Tim Hetherington, Sebastian, and I made together. And he just said to come down. So we went down to DC on December 11, 2020 and started working.

BERGEN: When a revolution happens, even the revolutionaries sometimes have no idea what is going to happen. To what extent did the Proud Boys know this was going to happen on January 6?

QUESTED: I don’t know. We did definitely look at the Proud Boys and say, “Well, are Proud Boys Jacobins? Are they Brown Shirts? Or are they football hooligans?” Or is it just Trumpism? Because that was a very unifying factor throughout the Proud Boys. There are no RINOs in the Proud Boys. It is the cult of Trump, and they were the muscle.

BERGEN: The footage that you have, why is it of interest to the committee, and what does it show?

QUESTED: It was shot with very high-end cameras at a very high resolution with high-quality lenses by trained professional journalists. There were three of us there and also a freelancer that we met on the day. I was shooting as well. So, basically, what we have is a full view of the day because, even though we were separated at the beginning, we managed to have parallel experiences that have nexus points. We were able to cut documentary scenes from different angles because we’re all seeing the same parts at the same time.

WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 6: Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as people try to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. Demonstrators breeched security and entered the Capitol as Congress debated the 2020 presidential election Electoral Vote Certification. (photo by Brent Stirton/Getty Images)
Opinion: GOP efforts to 'counterprogram' January 6 hearings will fail
BERGEN: What are the key scenes?

QUESTED: The Proud Boys walking down the Mall, the Proud Boys at lunch, the barriers coming down, the Proud Boys just as the barriers come down at the West Plaza of the Capitol, the fight on the lower West Plaza, and the fight at the tunnel on the west side of the Capitol.

BERGEN: The battle scene in the tunnel? You were there?

QUESTED: I was there.

BERGEN: What did you see?

QUESTED: Chaos and mayhem. I mean, mayhem in the true sense of the word.

BERGEN: Had you ever seen that in the United States?

QUESTED: I have not seen that in the United States, no.

BERGEN: Have you seen it anywhere?

QUESTED: Yeah. I’ve seen it around the world.

BERGEN: Where?

QUESTED: Venezuela 2017, Nicaragua 2018.

BERGEN: Were you scared?

QUESTED: I wasn’t scared because I’m so living in the moment, and my job is to document this. I have a task. So, I focus on my task. I got beat up pretty bad. My camera was broken. I got shot by a beanbag or pepper balls. I got tear-gassed.

BERGEN: What was that like?

QUESTED: Well, it’s not great. It’s not great because you’re in a big crowd, and you know no one in this crowd. You lose all sense of awareness, everything. But for all those in the crowd who were violent, there were many people that were just there to witness the event. They might have chanted or whatever, but there were also people there helping others. Someone came and poured water into my eyes, and I was like, “Don’t do that?” because I was worried I was going to get Covid. And I was like I’d rather be tear-gassed.

President Joe Biden walks with Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson of Sweden and President Sauli Niinisto of Finland as they arrive at the White House in Washington, Thursday May 19, 2022.
Opinion: American leadership is thriving abroad. It's a disturbingly different story at home
My phone didn’t work, so I couldn’t communicate what I was doing until basically six o’clock, when I called my family and said it’s all good.

BERGEN: You also filmed a meeting on January 5 between the leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers?

QUESTED: This meeting was in a parking garage. We picked Enrique Tarrio up by car from jail, as he had just made bond. (Editor’s note: Tarrio had been arrested on January 4, 2021 on a warrant charging him with burning a Black Lives Matter banner taken from a historic Black church and he was also found with high-capacity magazines, which are illegal in Washington, DC. He was later sentenced to a total of five months in jail for both crimes). We went to pick his stuff up from a lock-up garage south of the Mall. Then we went back up to pick up some bags from the Phoenix Park Hotel in downtown DC, and outside the hotel, we bumped into Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers. We picked up the bags, and somebody said, “You’ve got to come over to this parking garage.” So we went over to this garage, and there was Enrique Tarrio and Stewart Rhodes, along with a few other people.

BERGEN: And what were they doing there?

QUESTED: Ostensibly, they said they were meeting to discuss the issue that Enrique felt he had, which was that he had brought extra capacity gun magazines into DC, which is illegal.

But there were also discussions about his communications and how they were potentially compromised. I heard him say, “I want to stay close to my boys,” and assumed he was having a discussion about where he was going to go next. But that’s all I heard.

I was close to them but at the request of Enrique Tarrio, I put down my camera. My colleague Nico Lupo, who was approximately 20 feet away from Tarrio and Rhodes, was filming from behind a car, so the mic wasn’t picking up the sound as well as we would have hoped.

BERGEN: Do you think it was a planning meeting for the following day?

QUESTED: I don’t know. I can’t say it was a planning meeting. I can tell you it looks pretty bad that you see the two leaders of the two groups that have been charged with seditious conspiracy in a meeting beforehand, but I can’t say what they were doing.

Reagan remarks on receiving the final report of the Special Review Board on the Iran-Contra scandal.
Opinion: History offers a surprising warning about January 6 hearing drama
BERGEN: What are your hopes for your film?

QUESTED: Well, so we pivoted from our film about why America is so divided to a film that looks at the 64 days from the 2020 presidential election to January 6, 2021.

BERGEN: Is there interest in this film?

QUESTED: It took a lot of time to get interest in this film. We made an experiential film, which was just footage from the day, and we submitted it to a bunch of film festivals and hardly even got a reply, and when we did get a reply, they were like, “No, thank you. We’re not here to give any oxygen to these people.” And I said, “But if we don’t discuss this and bring truth to light, then how are we going to make this better?”

So, our film wants to lay out the facts of what happened in those 64 days in a fair and objective manner as we possibly can.

BERGEN: How much time did you spend with the committee and their investigators?

QUESTED: I had a few interviews, but my testimony of record lasted for seven hours.

BERGEN: What were the key points that you made?

QUESTED: Basically, my testimony revolves around my footage. So, I was explaining the context for my footage and what I saw.

BERGEN: Your entire life is about reporting and making a narrative. Is that what the congressional committee is doing?

QUESTED: I think that is, but, you know, we’re in a world where the narrative is driven by the politics.

BERGEN: Do you think these hearings will lay out the evidentiary basis of what happened on January 6?

GET OUR FREE WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

Sign up for CNN Opinion’s newsletter.
Join us on Twitter and Facebook
QUESTED: I think they will. From my conversations and the line of questioning, I think that they have a group of investigative counsels that are legitimately interested in being able to show the truth and prove it.

BERGEN: And you didn’t have any problem cooperating with them as a journalist?

QUESTED: Look, I’m in the business of truth, and I think they’re in the business of truth, and however people use the truth, that’s not my interest. My interest is having the truth out there.

BERGEN: Did you ever imagine that you would be where you were testifying on Thursday night?

QUESTED: Oh, hell, no. I like to ask the questions. I don’t like answering questions.

[Lov2fish]

Why do you keep quoting useless mainstream media outlets on this shit? They are useless tools. Merely spin doctors who only want to sale add space, bullshit does that.

None of them fucktards can spell constitution, let alone its meaning or writing. There is no interpretation of the constitution. It is absolute. It was written in a way that a 5th. grade education would be able to understand it, and it was done on purpose as that was the average education level at its penning.

[JAFF]

Originally Posted by Lov2fish

Nothing from any main stream media source is valid as fact. Sorry, they have taken away that assumption themselves the last decade when it went full on prime time comedy.

I know what sedation is, and even though January, 6th. was a shit show, it did not remotely meet the criteria to call it an insurrection. Liberalism is truly a mental disorder. Nobody can be that mentally dysfunctional without an underlying cause.

A group of people following trumps request stormed the capitol to stop the electoral college from finalizing the election.

insurrection noun

in·​sur·​rec·​tion | \ ˌin(t)-sə-ˈrek-shən \
Definition of insurrection
: an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government

Love the interweb

[JAFF]

https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-i...-where-1732283

The raid on Mar-a-Lago was based largely on information from an FBI confidential human source, one who was able to identify what classified documents former President Trump was still hiding and even the location of those documents, two senior government officials told Newsweek.

The officials, who have direct knowledge of the FBI's deliberations and were granted anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters, said the raid of Donald Trump's Florida residence was deliberately timed to occur when the former president was away.

donald trump
A confidential informer told the FBI what documents Donald Trump was hiding at Mar-a-Lago, and where. The former president at a rally on August 05, 2022 in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES

FBI decision-makers in Washington and Miami thought that denying the former president a photo opportunity or a platform from which to grandstand (or to attempt to thwart the raid) would lower the profile of the event, says one of the sources, a senior Justice Department official who is a 30-year veteran of the FBI.

NEWSWEEK NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP >
The effort to keep the raid low-key failed: instead, it prompted a furious response from GOP leaders and Trump supporters. "What a spectacular backfire," says the Justice official.

"I know that there is much speculation out there that this is political persecution, but it is really the best and the worst of the bureaucracy in action," the official says. "They wanted to punctuate the fact that this was a routine law enforcement action, stripped of any political overtones, and yet [they] got exactly the opposite."


Both senior government officials say the raid was scheduled with no political motive, the FBI solely intent on recovering highly classified documents that were illegally removed from the White House. Preparations to conduct such an operation began weeks ago, but in planning the date and time, the FBI Miami Field Office and Washington headquarters were focused on the former president's scheduled return to Florida from his residences in New York and New Jersey.

"They were seeking to avoid any media circus," says the second source, a senior intelligence official who was briefed on the investigation and the operation. "So even though everything made sense bureaucratically and the FBI feared that the documents might be destroyed, they also created the very firestorm they sought to avoid, in ignoring the fallout."

NEWSWEEK SUBSCRIPTION OFFERS >
A "Florida For Trump" flag outside Mar-a-Lago
A "Florida For Trump" flag being displayed outside Mar-a-Lago following the FBI search.
EVA MARIE UZCATEGUI/GETTY
On Monday at about 10 a.m. EST, two dozen FBI agents and technicians showed up at Donald Trump's Florida home to execute a search warrant to obtain any government-owned documents that might be in the possession of Trump but are required to be delivered to the Archives under the provisions of the 1978 Presidential Records Act. (In response to the Hillary Clinton email scandal, Trump himself signed a law in 2018 that made it a felony to remove and retain classified documents.)

The act establishes that presidential records are the property of the U.S. government and not a president's private property. Put in place after Watergate to avoid the abuses of the Nixon administration, the law imposes strict penalties for failure to comply. "Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined" $2,000, up to three years in prison or "shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States."


The act, and concerns about the illegal possession of classified "national defense information" are the bases for the search warrant, according to the two sources. The raid had nothing to do with the January 6 investigation or any other alleged wrongdoing by the former president.


The road to the raid began a year-and-a-half ago, when in the transition from the Trump administration to that of President Joe Biden, there were immediate questions raised by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as to whether the presidential records turned over to the federal agency for historical preservation were complete or not.

In February, Archivist David Ferriero testified before Congress that his agency began talking with Trump's people right after they left office and that the Trump camp had already returned 15 boxes of documents to the Archives. Ferriero said that in those materials, the Archives discovered items "marked as classified national security information," unleashing further inquiries as to whether Trump continued to possess classified material.

Will Trump Do Time? What It Would Take to Convict the Former PresidentREAD MORE Will Trump Do Time? What It Would Take to Convict the Former President
The basic outlines of the facts surrounding this timeline have been confirmed by the former president. He has previously said that he was returning any official records to the Archives, labeling any confusion in the matter as "an ordinary and routine process to ensure the preservation of my legacy and in accordance with the Presidential Records Act." He also claimed the Archives "did not 'find' anything" in what he had already been returned, suggesting that there was nothing sensitive. He said the documents had inadvertently shipped to Florida during the six-hour transition period in which his belongings were moved.

According to the Justice Department source, the Archives saw things differently, believing that the former White House was stonewalling and continued to possess unauthorized material. Earlier this year, they asked the Justice Department to investigate.


In late April, the source says, a federal grand jury began deliberating whether there was a violation of the Presidential Records Act or whether President Trump unlawfully possessed national security information. Through the grand jury process, the National Archives provided federal prosecutors with copies of the documents received from former President Trump in January 2022. The grand jury concluded that there had been a violation of the law, according to the Justice Department source.

In the past week, the prosecutor in the case and local Assistant U.S. Attorney went to Florida magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart in West Palm Beach to seek approval for the search of Donald Trump's private residence. The affidavit to obtain the search warrant, the intelligence source says, contained abundant and persuasive detail that Trump continued to possess the relevant records in violation of federal law, and that investigators had sufficient information to prove that those records were located at Mar-a-Lago—including the detail that they were contained in a specific safe in a specific room.

"In order for the investigators to convince the Florida judge to approve such an unprecedented raid, the information had to be solid, which the FBI claimed," says the intelligence source.


According to experts familiar with FBI practices, Judge Reinhart reviewed the prosecutor's evidence and asked numerous questions about the sources and the urgency. The judge signed a search warrant allowing the FBI to look for relevant material and the FBI then planned the operation, wanting to conduct the raid while Trump was spending time at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. A Secret Service source who spoke on background said the Secret Service director was given advance warning and was later told the specifics of the raid.

Because the Secret Service is still responsible for protecting the former president, his family, and his property, the FBI had to coordinate with the Secret Service to gain access to the grounds.

A convoy of unmarked black SUVs and a Ryder rental truck filled with about three dozen FBI special agents and technicians entered the gates in the early evening. Heavily armed Secret Service agents were also visibly present at the gates. The Palm Beach Police Department was also present at the scene.


The entire operation was conducted relatively stealthily. No FBI people were seen in their iconic blue windbreakers announcing the presence of the Bureau. And though local law enforcement was present, the Palm Beach Police Department was careful to tweet on Tuesday that it "was not aware of the existence of a search warrant nor did our department assist the FBI in the execution of a search warrant."

According to news reports, some 10-15 boxes of documents were removed from the premises. Donald Trump said in a statement that the FBI opened his personal safe as part of their search. Trump attorney Lindsey Halligan, who was present during the multi-hour search, says that the FBI targeted three rooms—a bedroom, an office and a storage room. That suggests that the FBI knew specifically where to look.

READ MORE
Who Is Bruce Reinhart? Judge Who Approved FBI Mar-a-Lago Raid
Donald Trump Suggests FBI Agents 'Planting' Evidence at Mar-a-Lago
Fact Check: Did Trump Appoint Judge Who Approved FBI Mar-A-Lago Raid?

"This unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate," former President Trump said in a statement. He called the raid "prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don't want me to run for President in 2024."

Though Trump and his Republican Party allies are portraying the raid as politically motivated, it is likely the unprecedented nature of the raid on the property of a former president will have the greatest reverberation. Even Trump's political rivals have rallied in condemning the FBI.

Former Vice President Mike Pence tweeted that "no former President of the United States has ever been subject to a raid of their personal residence in American history." Mike Pompeo, Trump's Secretary of State and CIA director, tweeted that Attorney General Merrick Garland "must explain why 250 yrs of practice was upended w/ this raid. I served on Benghazi Com[mittee] where we proved Hillary possessed classified info. We didn't raid her home."


The Biden White House says the president was not briefed about the Mar-a-Lago raid and knew nothing about it in advance. "The Justice Department conducts investigations independently and we leave any law enforcement matters to them," Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday afternoon. "It would not be appropriate for us to comment on any ongoing investigations."

Merrick Garland
As U.S. President Joe Biden, appearing via teleconference, looks on, Attorney General Merrick Garland attends a meeting of the Task Force on Reproductive Healthcare Access during an event at the White House complex August 3, 2022 in Washington, DC.
WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES
The senior Justice Department source says that Garland was regularly briefed on the Records Act investigation, and that he knew about the grand jury and what material federal prosecutors were seeking. He insists, though, that Garland had no prior knowledge of the date and time of the specific raid, nor was he asked to approve it. "I know it's hard for people to believe," says the official, "but this was a matter for the U.S. Attorney and the FBI."

[JAFF]

https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-i...-where-1732283

The raid on Mar-a-Lago was based largely on information from an FBI confidential human source, one who was able to identify what classified documents former President Trump was still hiding and even the location of those documents, two senior government officials told Newsweek.

The officials, who have direct knowledge of the FBI's deliberations and were granted anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters, said the raid of Donald Trump's Florida residence was deliberately timed to occur when the former president was away.

donald trump
A confidential informer told the FBI what documents Donald Trump was hiding at Mar-a-Lago, and where. The former president at a rally on August 05, 2022 in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES

FBI decision-makers in Washington and Miami thought that denying the former president a photo opportunity or a platform from which to grandstand (or to attempt to thwart the raid) would lower the profile of the event, says one of the sources, a senior Justice Department official who is a 30-year veteran of the FBI.

NEWSWEEK NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP >
The effort to keep the raid low-key failed: instead, it prompted a furious response from GOP leaders and Trump supporters. "What a spectacular backfire," says the Justice official.

"I know that there is much speculation out there that this is political persecution, but it is really the best and the worst of the bureaucracy in action," the official says. "They wanted to punctuate the fact that this was a routine law enforcement action, stripped of any political overtones, and yet [they] got exactly the opposite."


Both senior government officials say the raid was scheduled with no political motive, the FBI solely intent on recovering highly classified documents that were illegally removed from the White House. Preparations to conduct such an operation began weeks ago, but in planning the date and time, the FBI Miami Field Office and Washington headquarters were focused on the former president's scheduled return to Florida from his residences in New York and New Jersey.

"They were seeking to avoid any media circus," says the second source, a senior intelligence official who was briefed on the investigation and the operation. "So even though everything made sense bureaucratically and the FBI feared that the documents might be destroyed, they also created the very firestorm they sought to avoid, in ignoring the fallout."

NEWSWEEK SUBSCRIPTION OFFERS >
A "Florida For Trump" flag outside Mar-a-Lago
A "Florida For Trump" flag being displayed outside Mar-a-Lago following the FBI search.
EVA MARIE UZCATEGUI/GETTY
On Monday at about 10 a.m. EST, two dozen FBI agents and technicians showed up at Donald Trump's Florida home to execute a search warrant to obtain any government-owned documents that might be in the possession of Trump but are required to be delivered to the Archives under the provisions of the 1978 Presidential Records Act. (In response to the Hillary Clinton email scandal, Trump himself signed a law in 2018 that made it a felony to remove and retain classified documents.)

The act establishes that presidential records are the property of the U.S. government and not a president's private property. Put in place after Watergate to avoid the abuses of the Nixon administration, the law imposes strict penalties for failure to comply. "Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined" $2,000, up to three years in prison or "shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States."


The act, and concerns about the illegal possession of classified "national defense information" are the bases for the search warrant, according to the two sources. The raid had nothing to do with the January 6 investigation or any other alleged wrongdoing by the former president.


The road to the raid began a year-and-a-half ago, when in the transition from the Trump administration to that of President Joe Biden, there were immediate questions raised by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as to whether the presidential records turned over to the federal agency for historical preservation were complete or not.

In February, Archivist David Ferriero testified before Congress that his agency began talking with Trump's people right after they left office and that the Trump camp had already returned 15 boxes of documents to the Archives. Ferriero said that in those materials, the Archives discovered items "marked as classified national security information," unleashing further inquiries as to whether Trump continued to possess classified material.

Will Trump Do Time? What It Would Take to Convict the Former PresidentREAD MORE Will Trump Do Time? What It Would Take to Convict the Former President
The basic outlines of the facts surrounding this timeline have been confirmed by the former president. He has previously said that he was returning any official records to the Archives, labeling any confusion in the matter as "an ordinary and routine process to ensure the preservation of my legacy and in accordance with the Presidential Records Act." He also claimed the Archives "did not 'find' anything" in what he had already been returned, suggesting that there was nothing sensitive. He said the documents had inadvertently shipped to Florida during the six-hour transition period in which his belongings were moved.

According to the Justice Department source, the Archives saw things differently, believing that the former White House was stonewalling and continued to possess unauthorized material. Earlier this year, they asked the Justice Department to investigate.


In late April, the source says, a federal grand jury began deliberating whether there was a violation of the Presidential Records Act or whether President Trump unlawfully possessed national security information. Through the grand jury process, the National Archives provided federal prosecutors with copies of the documents received from former President Trump in January 2022. The grand jury concluded that there had been a violation of the law, according to the Justice Department source.

In the past week, the prosecutor in the case and local Assistant U.S. Attorney went to Florida magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart in West Palm Beach to seek approval for the search of Donald Trump's private residence. The affidavit to obtain the search warrant, the intelligence source says, contained abundant and persuasive detail that Trump continued to possess the relevant records in violation of federal law, and that investigators had sufficient information to prove that those records were located at Mar-a-Lago—including the detail that they were contained in a specific safe in a specific room.

"In order for the investigators to convince the Florida judge to approve such an unprecedented raid, the information had to be solid, which the FBI claimed," says the intelligence source.


According to experts familiar with FBI practices, Judge Reinhart reviewed the prosecutor's evidence and asked numerous questions about the sources and the urgency. The judge signed a search warrant allowing the FBI to look for relevant material and the FBI then planned the operation, wanting to conduct the raid while Trump was spending time at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. A Secret Service source who spoke on background said the Secret Service director was given advance warning and was later told the specifics of the raid.

Because the Secret Service is still responsible for protecting the former president, his family, and his property, the FBI had to coordinate with the Secret Service to gain access to the grounds.

A convoy of unmarked black SUVs and a Ryder rental truck filled with about three dozen FBI special agents and technicians entered the gates in the early evening. Heavily armed Secret Service agents were also visibly present at the gates. The Palm Beach Police Department was also present at the scene.


The entire operation was conducted relatively stealthily. No FBI people were seen in their iconic blue windbreakers announcing the presence of the Bureau. And though local law enforcement was present, the Palm Beach Police Department was careful to tweet on Tuesday that it "was not aware of the existence of a search warrant nor did our department assist the FBI in the execution of a search warrant."

According to news reports, some 10-15 boxes of documents were removed from the premises. Donald Trump said in a statement that the FBI opened his personal safe as part of their search. Trump attorney Lindsey Halligan, who was present during the multi-hour search, says that the FBI targeted three rooms—a bedroom, an office and a storage room. That suggests that the FBI knew specifically where to look.

READ MORE
Who Is Bruce Reinhart? Judge Who Approved FBI Mar-a-Lago Raid
Donald Trump Suggests FBI Agents 'Planting' Evidence at Mar-a-Lago
Fact Check: Did Trump Appoint Judge Who Approved FBI Mar-A-Lago Raid?

"This unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate," former President Trump said in a statement. He called the raid "prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don't want me to run for President in 2024."

Though Trump and his Republican Party allies are portraying the raid as politically motivated, it is likely the unprecedented nature of the raid on the property of a former president will have the greatest reverberation. Even Trump's political rivals have rallied in condemning the FBI.

Former Vice President Mike Pence tweeted that "no former President of the United States has ever been subject to a raid of their personal residence in American history." Mike Pompeo, Trump's Secretary of State and CIA director, tweeted that Attorney General Merrick Garland "must explain why 250 yrs of practice was upended w/ this raid. I served on Benghazi Com[mittee] where we proved Hillary possessed classified info. We didn't raid her home."


The Biden White House says the president was not briefed about the Mar-a-Lago raid and knew nothing about it in advance. "The Justice Department conducts investigations independently and we leave any law enforcement matters to them," Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday afternoon. "It would not be appropriate for us to comment on any ongoing investigations."

Merrick Garland
As U.S. President Joe Biden, appearing via teleconference, looks on, Attorney General Merrick Garland attends a meeting of the Task Force on Reproductive Healthcare Access during an event at the White House complex August 3, 2022 in Washington, DC.
WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES
The senior Justice Department source says that Garland was regularly briefed on the Records Act investigation, and that he knew about the grand jury and what material federal prosecutors were seeking. He insists, though, that Garland had no prior knowledge of the date and time of the specific raid, nor was he asked to approve it. "I know it's hard for people to believe," says the official, "but this was a matter for the U.S. Attorney and the FBI."