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Mar-a-Largo raided by FBI?

Ford said:
While Trump was busy interrupting wedding guests at his resort, what were the unscrupulous (and much smarter) people doing with their access to the (for a long time unlocked) storage room in the hallway off the pool?
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Of course that's the serious question. FBI will devote considerable resources to detecting effects/evidence attributable to specific leaks. Trump should pay $$$ for the resources needed to mitigate the effects of his actions. You know, like if you started a forest fire for fun.
 
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Trump has tweeted the following on his "truthsocial" platform:

Terrible the way the FBI, during the Raid of Mar-a-Lago, threw documents haphazardly all over the floor (perhaps pretending it was me that did it!), and then started taking pictures of them for the public to see. Thought they wanted them kept Secret? Lucky I Declassified!
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So the guy keeping the classified government documents illegally is accusing the FBI of having staged the photo to embarrass him, and then he is doubling down on his unsupported claim that he declassified the documents.

Philip Allen Lacovara was deputy solicitor general of the United States for criminal and national security matters, counsel to the Watergate special prosecutor and president of the District of Columbia Bar. He points out in this article that the President does not have an unfettered right to declassify documents, contrary to what many in the mainstream press have been saying. The Supreme Court has already ruled that the President is bound by existing established procedures in the Nixon Tapes ruling:

No, Trump didn’t declassify everything; it’s barred by the Nixon tapes decision​


Hence, Trump is confirming that those documents were in his home and that they had classification markings on them, even though classification markings have to be removed during the established procedure of declassification. Not the first time that he has been caught in a lie, but this one is being helped along by widespread misreporting that a president may actually have the right to declassify documents without adhering to the established procedure. The procedure currently in effect was established by President Obama, and Trump never bothered to change it, probably because he didn't understand that he needed to do that.
 
Copernicus said:
Trump has tweeted the following on his "truthsocial" platform:

Terrible the way the FBI, during the Raid of Mar-a-Lago, threw documents haphazardly all over the floor (perhaps pretending it was me that did it!), and then started taking pictures of them for the public to see. Thought they wanted them kept Secret? Lucky I Declassified!
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So the guy keeping the classified government documents illegally is accusing the FBI of having staged the photo to embarrass him, and then he is doubling down on his unsupported claim that he declassified the documents.
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Remember, a person that always lies is much harder to catch lying, as they'll just lie again... and again. In court, this won't work as well, especially depending on the documents he had. But for the general public or those that obfuscate enough to justify voting for him because the Dems are 'even worse', this sort of stuff works.

But yes, in this latest tweet, he effectively admits he had those documents, but is complaining that the FBI made it look like he had them all laying out.

Declassification could go to SCOTUS, and the highly partisan SCOTUS would have to rule that it is enough for the President to think something, to make it real, which would be an intolerable ruling, as it'd imply that the President merely needs to claim he thought something in order to make it a viable order. If he could do that, he could say he thought about ending the declassification protocols put into place by Obama... after the fact, and then that would be rule of law within the Executive Branch as well. This SCOTUS, who knows.

Of course, the Executive Branch created the rules and there is no viewed conflict with any other branch, so it'd seem preposterous for SCOTUS to even consider the issue... because the Executive Branch is investigating the Executive Branch for violating Executive Branch protocol.
Artemus said:
NBCNews explains why they took Trump's passports during the raid: The were mixed in with the classified documents in Trump's desk so provides direct evidence that Trump knew that the documents were there. No blaming a flunky on this one.
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It certainly does make one wonder why his passports were mixed in with the classified documents to begin with. If these documents were trophies from his Presidency, it'd seem odd to store travel documents with them.
 
Trump claims the FBI may have planted evidence
The FBI reveals what documents they've found
Trump claims those have been declassified

Republicans: The FBI planted eviden... I mean, those aren't classified documents!!
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
Artemus said:
NBCNews explains why they took Trump's passports during the raid: The were mixed in with the classified documents in Trump's desk so provides direct evidence that Trump knew that the documents were there. No blaming a flunky on this one.
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It certainly does make one wonder why his passports were mixed in with the classified documents to begin with. If these documents were trophies from his Presidency, it'd seem odd to store travel documents with them.
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They may have been different file folders in the same drawer or even in different drawers of the same desk. Either way, it removes any question of who actually had possession of the classified documents.
 
Artemus said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
Artemus said:
NBCNews explains why they took Trump's passports during the raid: The were mixed in with the classified documents in Trump's desk so provides direct evidence that Trump knew that the documents were there. No blaming a flunky on this one.
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It certainly does make one wonder why his passports were mixed in with the classified documents to begin with. If these documents were trophies from his Presidency, it'd seem odd to store travel documents with them.
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They may have been different file folders in the same drawer or even in different drawers of the same desk. Either way, it removes any question of who actually had possession of the classified documents.
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I would love to know specifically which documents they had sitting next to their passport, though they are probably too classified to even list that.
 
ZiprHead said:
Classified, unclassified. It doesn't matter. None of this belonged to him.
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Which the Justice Department shot against Trump in his demand for a Special Master... as the documents in question don't even belong to him, so he has no standing for their review.

A defense of... well you might have seized some of my own documents in those classified documents that I totally didn't have in my office... of which were also declassified... so it wasn't illegal for me to have them.

That sort of argument works on the Internet... not so much the courtroom. This is why Trump's claims of voter fraud never saw the light of day in the courts.
 
Lucky for Trump, he will win in the court of public opinion no matter what. If need be he can invent whatever non-existent statute is required to authorize his possession of those documents or even fucking nuclear weapons, and his drooling sycophants will not question a word of it.
DOJ needs to get off the dime and indict the MF asap.
 
www.newsweek.com

What the dates on Trump's secret documents tell us about what was found

The small snippet of information contained in a newly released photo of secret documents kept at Mar-a-Lago dates to a fraught time in U.S. foreign policy.
www.newsweek.com www.newsweek.com
The files themselves—part of Justice Department allegations Trump lied to investigators seeking the return of classified documents from his time in the White House—reveal little on their own, and the visible contents of the pages contained within the files are heavily redacted. However, three files, all of which are restricted access, have visible dates on them: two dated August 20, 2018, and another dated May 9 of that same year.

While the contents of those documents, at this point, are purely speculative, the date of their creation and the security clearance required to view them give an approximate idea of the type of intelligence information in Trump's possession since leaving the White House early last year.

While one of the August documents is restricted as "limited access," the other is specifically designated as an originator-controlled document, barred from dissemination to foreign nationals.

Both were also created during a fraught juncture in the Trump administration's foreign policy.

August 20 coincided with the day CNN confirmed a Saudi Arabian bomb that killed 40 Yemeni schoolchildren two weeks earlier had originally been acquired via an arms sale with the United States amid simmering tensions between the two nations. August 20 was also the day the U.S. rejected a deal with Turkey for American pastor Andrew Burton in exchange for banking sanctions relief, and the same day Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinian protesters and injured hundreds more amid intensifying protests over Israel's settlement policies within the Gaza Strip.

At the same time, Afghanistan's then-president announced a three-month ceasefire with the Taliban to mark the Muslim Eid holiday, bringing a close to what the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said, at the time, had been the bloodiest year for civilians in the Afghan conflict.

The May document, also listed as "top secret," contains no specific security classification. However, its release came in the lead-up to major events involving the United States abroad, including the escalation of the Saudi-Yemeni conflict and revelations around new human rights violations in the Syrian civil war.
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The biggest coincidence with the May 9 document, however, likely lies with what happened just one day earlier: Trump's announcement that the United States would be withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal.
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Yahoo
Trump attorney Alina Habba on Wednesday tried to casually dismiss the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump’s hoarding of classified documents, claiming that potential acts of “espionage” and “obstruction” are merely “mundane statutes.”...“They say themselves in these papers that they filed that this is under the Presidential Records Act,” she declared. “So what they did was try and criminalize Donald Trump as they always do. They found these three mundane statutes: espionage and the two others—obstruction. And they are trying to claim there is some sort of criminal activity.”
 
How the Photo of Top Secret Folders at Trump’s Home Came About - The New York Times

"Federal agents arrayed classified materials on a floor at former President Donald J. Trump’s Florida residence for a photograph as a standard part of their evidence-gathering procedures."
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump took to his social media site to say that “the F.B.I., during the raid of Mar-a-Lago, threw documents haphazardly all over the floor (perhaps pretending that it was me that did it!), and then started taking pictures of them for the public to see.”

But the genesis of the photograph appears to be in keeping with standard protocols for how federal agents handle evidence they come across in a search.

The folders were arrayed by agents at Mar-a-Lago after being removed from what the filing indicated was Mr. Trump’s office — they were not discovered scattered on the floor, according to two federal law enforcement officials.
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However, the article did not say how the visible parts of those documents got covered in white. Was it white sheets that the FBI agents put on top of them? Were those white sheets already there? Were those white areas painted on by someone with image-editing software?

The documents have a lot of overlap, and looking at the picture carefully, there look like some mistakes in doing that overlap. So the white areas were likely image-edited on (I don't like "Photoshopped").

Further evidence is how white those white areas are: noticeably whiter than the paper or the boxes, both of which were originally very white but were darkened in the picture from being photographed. The camera would likely have adjusted its exposure to make the brightest parts close to maximum for their hue and saturation, even if not exact maximum. Notice also the reddish tint of the documents That would have to be the result of image editing, which can make exact (255,255,255) #FFFFFF white. The white parts were (217,217,217), but much brighter than the box (133,143,149), the picture frame (152,155,150), or the documents (200,185,179). Image editing done on the 2040*1359 WEBP picture that was saved from the New York Times article.

Also,
One noteworthy element of the photograph, as the Justice Department pointed out in its filing yesterday, is that none of the folders bear a label or stamp indicating that Mr. Trump declassified them, as he has periodically claimed when asked about his retention of government materials requested by the National Archives. Documents that have been declassified typically contain explicit markings indicating the change.
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lpetrich said:
How the Photo of Top Secret Folders at Trump’s Home Came About - The New York Times

"Federal agents arrayed classified materials on a floor at former President Donald J. Trump’s Florida residence for a photograph as a standard part of their evidence-gathering procedures."
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump took to his social media site to say that “the F.B.I., during the raid of Mar-a-Lago, threw documents haphazardly all over the floor (perhaps pretending that it was me that did it!), and then started taking pictures of them for the public to see.”

But the genesis of the photograph appears to be in keeping with standard protocols for how federal agents handle evidence they come across in a search.

The folders were arrayed by agents at Mar-a-Lago after being removed from what the filing indicated was Mr. Trump’s office — they were not discovered scattered on the floor, according to two federal law enforcement officials.
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However, the article did not say how the visible parts of those documents got covered in white. Was it white sheets that the FBI agents put on top of them? Were those white sheets already there? Were those white areas painted on by someone with image-editing software?

The documents have a lot of overlap, and looking at the picture carefully, there look like some mistakes in doing that overlap. So the white areas were likely image-edited on (I don't like "Photoshopped").

Further evidence is how white those white areas are: noticeably whiter than the paper or the boxes, both of which were originally very white but were darkened in the picture from being photographed. The camera would likely have adjusted its exposure to make the brightest parts close to maximum for their hue and saturation, even if not exact maximum. Notice also the reddish tint of the documents That would have to be the result of image editing, which can make exact (255,255,255) #FFFFFF white. The white parts were (217,217,217), but much brighter than the box (133,143,149), the picture frame (152,155,150), or the documents (200,185,179). Image editing done on the 2040*1359 WEBP picture that was saved from the New York Times article.

Also,
One noteworthy element of the photograph, as the Justice Department pointed out in its filing yesterday, is that none of the folders bear a label or stamp indicating that Mr. Trump declassified them, as he has periodically claimed when asked about his retention of government materials requested by the National Archives. Documents that have been declassified typically contain explicit markings indicating the change.
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Honestly, the value for the white region is itself suspicious. If we are to accept a difference of +/-10 for a value of white on a document or box, the that's roughly a 20^3 chance of accidentally coloring it that way.

Even 5^3 for the picture frame is a fairly ridiculous number especially if there is no gradient to it.

Depending on the gradient of that color value on the final document, it's "flatness of color", this makes the resultant value from a sampled color rather than an edited color even less plausible.
 
Jarhyn said:
Honestly, the value for the white region is itself suspicious. If we are to accept a difference of +/-10 for a value of white on a document or box, the that's roughly a 20^3 chance of accidentally coloring it that way.

Even 5^3 for the picture frame is a fairly ridiculous number especially if there is no gradient to it.

Depending on the gradient of that color value on the final document, it's "flatness of color", this makes the resultant value from a sampled color rather than an edited color even less plausible.
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Yes, that is indeed something to look for.

I checked on that by mousing over various regions of the image with my image editor - Pixelmator (Apple OSes only, and payware, but MUCH cheaper than Photoshop). There were indeed gradients on the boxes and on the frame and on the documents, but the white areas had constant colors.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
Are we shocked that they redacted the coversheets of the confidential stuff when releasing it publicly or in court?
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Not really. It's kind of shocking, however, that the redactions did not also use a physical obscuration. Digital redaction means that there is a digital (and thus high-velocity) copy that has no redaction sitting somewhere.

Even that may, in fact, run against proper procedure with documents this sensitive.
 
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