Mar-a-Largo raided by FBI?

[Copernicus]

It would probably be impossible to link any deaths to the documents that Trump took simply because those documents would not be available to a jury, or, in fact, prosecutors and defense lawyers. Trump addicts routinely reject any criticism of him, even when the evidence against him seems overwhelming. It would be much easier to prosecute him for crimes such as obstruction of justice, mishandling government documents, and violations of the Espionage Act, and others for which evidence can be presented in open court.

 

[jab]

Former prosecutors mock Trump's attorneys and say they may need to hire their own lawyers amid continued Mar-a-Lago fallout

One national security lawyer said Trump's latest suit confused him. An ex-prosecutor said Trump's lawyers were "incompetent or out of their depth."

www.yahoo.com

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

I find these stories of Trump "reviewing" scads of documents, many of them multi-page, to be at odds with the stance taken by his detractors that he has the attention span of a fruitfly and can barely make it though 1/5 page of text.

 

[jab]

The judge has asked Trump's team for clarification of their insanely stupid request for special master.

District Court Judge Aileen Cannon in the Southern District of Florida ordered Trump's lawyers to elaborate on their arguments for why the court has the ability to step in at this time, explain what exactly Trump is asking for and whether the Justice Department has been served with Trump's special master motion.

Cannon also asked Trump's team to weigh in on any effect the request might have on a separate review conducted by a magistrate judge into whether any portions of the still-sealed FBI affidavit laying out probable cause for the search can be released.

The judge's order showcases many of the ways that the complaint filed by Trump fell short of what would have been expected of a court submission asking for the appointment of a special master-- particularly in a search as high-stakes as the one FBI executed at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month

"They really didn't ask for anything. That's the craziness," Schnapp [criminal defense lawyer in FL] said. "They didn't ask for anything to be done in the immediate future to slow it down, even though that's what they claimed to be doing"

All the dumb in this request is spelled out in the article, from citing civil rules (instead of criminal) to political ranting to filing the wrong way with the wrong court...

I don't know how judges can be so restrained in their responses sometimes.

This judge is now apparently on the verge of granting the request.

 

[Jarhyn]

It is amazing that JH cannot seem to bring themselves to recognize that the boxes were there, on that property, in that condition.

Those boxes being on that property is a crime. There is nothing ambiguous or uncertain of that. It is theft.

Those boxes being stored insecurely on any property is ALSO a crime. It is mishandling.

Former prosecutors mock Trump's attorneys and say they may need to hire their own lawyers amid continued Mar-a-Lago fallout

One national security lawyer said Trump's latest suit confused him. An ex-prosecutor said Trump's lawyers were "incompetent or out of their depth."

www.yahoo.com

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

I find these stories of Trump "reviewing" scads of documents, many of them multi-page, to be at odds with the stance taken by his detractors that he has the attention span of a fruitfly and can barely make it though 1/5 page of text.

To be fair, he could "review" them by having someone else look through them while telling him what's in the box.

I expect that this personal review either never happened, or happened with assistance.

 

[Copernicus]

Former prosecutors mock Trump's attorneys and say they may need to hire their own lawyers amid continued Mar-a-Lago fallout

One national security lawyer said Trump's latest suit confused him. An ex-prosecutor said Trump's lawyers were "incompetent or out of their depth."

www.yahoo.com

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

I find these stories of Trump "reviewing" scads of documents, many of them multi-page, to be at odds with the stance taken by his detractors that he has the attention span of a fruitfly and can barely make it though 1/5 page of text.

Many of those detractors are those who have tried to get him to listen to security briefings or familiarize himself with various aspects of his job when he was president. It appears that he really has little or no patience with anything that doesn't affect him directly in some way. He is known as a micromanager when it comes to financial matters or anything that might affect his popularity with his base. One of his obsessions is the fear that the government was riddled with "deep state" enemies out to bring him down. These especially included people in the intelligence agencies who had expressed deep concern over his ties with Vladimir Putin. He would also have been intensely interested in what the government might use against him in future lawsuits. I suspect that he gathered as many classified materials as he could on anything to do with Russia, Saudia Arabia, the Mueller investigation, and other related materials in order to gain some legal advantage over his adversaries. That would have focused his attention as he went through all of those materials.

 

[bilby]

It is amazing that JH cannot seem to bring themselves to recognize that the boxes were there, on that property, in that condition.

Those boxes being on that property is a crime. There is nothing ambiguous or uncertain of that. It is theft.

Those boxes being stored insecurely on any property is ALSO a crime. It is mishandling.

Former prosecutors mock Trump's attorneys and say they may need to hire their own lawyers amid continued Mar-a-Lago fallout

One national security lawyer said Trump's latest suit confused him. An ex-prosecutor said Trump's lawyers were "incompetent or out of their depth."

www.yahoo.com

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

I find these stories of Trump "reviewing" scads of documents, many of them multi-page, to be at odds with the stance taken by his detractors that he has the attention span of a fruitfly and can barely make it though 1/5 page of text.

To be fair, he could "review" them by having someone else look through them while telling him what's in the box.

He could even save the American taxpayers money, by having a foreign government provide somebody to do the job free of charge.

I am sure there would be no shortage of such volunteers.

 

[Copernicus]

I have a feeling that he would not want anyone else looking at those documents, if, for no other reason, because they might flip on him and tell future prosecutors what he was looking for. I suspect that the boxes he gave back to the government at the beginning of the year contained classified documents that he had already scoured for information. He wasn't returning the others just yet, because it was a slow process going through all of those documents for anything that mentioned him or people who might have ratted him out.

 

[Angry Floof]

I wonder why Patel is so furious with those FBI rapscallions who left his name unredacted.

 

[Ford]

I wonder why Patel is so furious with those FBI rapscallions who left his name unredacted.

I wonder why he got a job in the Pentagon in the first place. Dude was chief of staff to the "Acting" Secretary of Defense under Trump, but given his statements over this affair, he shouldn't have even been allowed in the front door of the building.

 

[Jarhyn]

It is amazing that JH cannot seem to bring themselves to recognize that the boxes were there, on that property, in that condition.

Those boxes being on that property is a crime. There is nothing ambiguous or uncertain of that. It is theft.

Those boxes being stored insecurely on any property is ALSO a crime. It is mishandling.

Former prosecutors mock Trump's attorneys and say they may need to hire their own lawyers amid continued Mar-a-Lago fallout

One national security lawyer said Trump's latest suit confused him. An ex-prosecutor said Trump's lawyers were "incompetent or out of their depth."

www.yahoo.com

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

I find these stories of Trump "reviewing" scads of documents, many of them multi-page, to be at odds with the stance taken by his detractors that he has the attention span of a fruitfly and can barely make it though 1/5 page of text.

To be fair, he could "review" them by having someone else look through them while telling him what's in the box.

He could even save the American taxpayers money, by having a foreign government provide somebody to do the job free of charge.

I am sure there would be no shortage of such volunteers.

This just in, Trump names Putin their "special master".

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Former prosecutors mock Trump's attorneys and say they may need to hire their own lawyers amid continued Mar-a-Lago fallout

One national security lawyer said Trump's latest suit confused him. An ex-prosecutor said Trump's lawyers were "incompetent or out of their depth."

www.yahoo.com

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

I find these stories of Trump "reviewing" scads of documents, many of them multi-page, to be at odds with the stance taken by his detractors that he has the attention span of a fruitfly and can barely make it though 1/5 page of text.

It is funny, because in the legal documents, they said he did... and if that isn't true, that is a crime. And if he did go through the documents, that too indicates he committed a crime. Hence the throw every pot of spaghetti against the wall defense maneuvers.

Although, I believe the one thing that might be the most interesting, is Trump's lawyers (I think he is down to those that advertise in the Yellow Pages) haven't contested the basis of the warrant.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I wonder why Patel is so furious with those FBI rapscallions who left his name unredacted.

By leaving the name unredacted, it implies he isn't that important in the case, but he had some level (if perhaps just very minor) involvement that is harming Trump, so to Trump, he might as well be the leaker. His name gets in the news, despite having little connection with this type of crime. He might also be paying attorneys by the number of articles his name pops up in.

 

[LoAmmo]

The judge who gets to decide if Trump gets a (presumably friendly) "special master" is a Trump appointee.

In other words, he's likely to remain above the law, while you and I aren't. That fucker will never see the inside of the cell he should've been thrown into 10 times over.

 

[Elixir]

Special Master ain’t no thang.
He’ll look through to see if there’s anything there that actually belongs to Trump.
No effect on the criminal proceedings, except the delay (which is the whole point).

 

[Jarhyn]

Special Master ain’t no thang.
He’ll look through to see if there’s anything there that actually belongs to Trump.
No effect on the criminal proceedings, except the delay (which is the whole point).

At issue here is that there's no way to go through it without whoever is going through it... Being able to go through it.

How many "special masters" friendly or even neutral to Trump are in fact trustworthy enough to even be in the same room as that?

They might as well appoint Putin to be the special master.

 

[Elixir]

Not even Putin is going to say “perfectly okay to return this TS/SCI document to this fine, responsible gentleman”. It’s more likely going to be Robert Mueller than Putin anyhow.
It has to be someone with SCI level clearance. Not a Trump appointee.

 

[Jarhyn]

Not even Putin is going to say “perfectly okay to return this TS/SCI document to this fine, responsible gentleman”. It’s more likely going to be Robert Mueller than Putin anyhow.

My point is that no matter who the special master is, they're volunteering to never leave the country unescorted ever again and live the rest of their life with their phones tapped.

It's creating a single, concentrated holder, and reader of that entire pile of secrets. There are vanishingly few people qualified and none of them are friendly to Trump at all.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The "special master" is going to require significant clearance. As long as it isn't Michael Flynn... this isn't a big deal. The trouble Trump has at the moment is that a Special Master doesn't actually provide much in the way of relief. It'll include a full accounting of the secrecy level of each document AS SHOWN ON THE DOCUMENT. The Special Master doesn't rule the legality of secrecy on anything except if it is lawyer-client privilege stuff, of which having secret documents isn't that.

The whole "executive privilege" thing isn't within the "special master's" review, as far as I'm aware. That'd take SCOTUS, and thankfully Trump has so thoroughly done a poor job "declassifying" these documents, even SCOTUS would be hard set to give him a pass on this. They'd have to suggest that mere thought or hearsay counts as declassification. If HIlary Clinton was caught with this document, would it be a crime? If so, it is for Trump too.

Also, Trump's problem with Executive privilege is that he ain't the President no more... and while prosecution of the former President sets a rough standard for Biden... so does letting a former President flagrantly break the law, especially with highly sensitive documents. Trump has no appreciation for the fact that the Presidency is more an office and institution... than it is a person. That is until the unitary executives in SCOTUS decide to implode our democracy.

 

[Copernicus]

Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon, a member in good standing of the Federalist Society (which helped get her the appointment), has been told that her help isn't needed. The FBI took special precautions in searching Mar-a-Lago, including the use of only local law enforcement to search Trump's office, and then submitted their materials to a special filtration team. The team has already identified materials that needed to be returned, including some that might have a bearing on attorney-client (not executive) privilege.

US: Review of possibly privileged Trump papers already over​

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon, a member in good standing of the Federalist Society (which helped get her the appointment), has been told that her help isn't needed. The FBI took special precautions in searching Mar-a-Lago, including the use of only local law enforcement to search Trump's office, and then submitted their materials to a special filtration team. The team has already identified materials that needed to be returned, including some that might have a bearing on attorney-client (not executive) privilege.

US: Review of possibly privileged Trump papers already over​

Sounds like she's just trying to keep up appearances to help control Orange Psycho's never-ending need for attention.