FBI executed search warrant at Mar-a-Lago

Stomach-churning piece in the WSJ about the last days of the Trump presidency and the rush to pack up. Of course now nobody wants to have had any responsibility whatsoever as to what went to Mar a Lago. Also there's no way to tell when some of the retrieved documents were taken there to begin with, i.e. as his presidency was ending or beforehand. So no clue how long some of it may have lain around in Florida in less than secure surroundings or who may have accessed it.

www.wsj.com

Trump’s Final Days Draw Scrutiny as Handling of Documents Investigated

A rushed and chaotic exit from the White House is at the center of a federal probe that conducted a search of the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
www.wsj.com www.wsj.com

Former advisers said that beyond the Oval Office, other West Wing offices, including the counsel’s and staff secretary’s offices, had begun packing up after the election was called for Mr. Biden. Members of their offices were designated as point persons. Aides put presidential records in boxes for the Archives and documents that didn’t need to be retained into “burn bags,” the contents of which would be incinerated.

Some former aides said they had substantial leeway in determining what went where.

“It was not a vigorous process where they have oversight and they’re checking to make sure you did it,” said one former White House official, who described the process as haphazard, even by the freewheeling standards of the administration. The document sorting, the former official said, was “kind of like the honor system.”
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Officials regularly transported classified information with the president to Mar-a-Lago and other properties he visited, which on its own isn’t unusual, former aides said. Mr. Trump as president had access at Mar-a-Lago to what is known as a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF, but didn’t always use it to view sensitive material, a former aide said.

Some aides grew concerned when the president would ask to hold on to a sensitive document while at his Florida resort because they didn’t always know where the document would end up, the aide said.
Click to expand...
 
trump just can't stop himself. he needs real lawyers, Didthey take his coloring books and the stuff he drew on with a sharpie?
Former President Donald Trump on Sunday called for the Justice Department to return the reams of documents FBI agents seized at his Mar-a-Lago resort last week, pointing to a report that said the information was covered by attorney-client or executive privilege.

“Oh great! It has just been learned that the FBI, in its now famous raid of Mar-a-Lago, took boxes of privileged ‘attorney-client’ material, and also ‘executive’ privileged material, which they knowingly should not have taken,” Trump said on his Truth Social site.

“By copy of this TRUTH, I respectfully request that these documents be immediately returned to the location from which they were taken. Thank you!,” the former president said in the posting.

nypost.com

Trump calls for seized documents to be returned to Mar-a-Lago

Former President Donald Trump on Sunday called for the Justice Department to return the reams of documents FBI agents seized at his Mar-a-Lago resort last week.
nypost.com nypost.com
 
fooferdoggie said:
trump just can't stop himself. he needs real lawyers, Didthey take his coloring books and the stuff he drew on with a sharpie?
Former President Donald Trump on Sunday called for the Justice Department to return the reams of documents FBI agents seized at his Mar-a-Lago resort last week, pointing to a report that said the information was covered by attorney-client or executive privilege.

“Oh great! It has just been learned that the FBI, in its now famous raid of Mar-a-Lago, took boxes of privileged ‘attorney-client’ material, and also ‘executive’ privileged material, which they knowingly should not have taken,” Trump said on his Truth Social site.

“By copy of this TRUTH, I respectfully request that these documents be immediately returned to the location from which they were taken. Thank you!,” the former president said in the posting.

nypost.com

Trump calls for seized documents to be returned to Mar-a-Lago

Former President Donald Trump on Sunday called for the Justice Department to return the reams of documents FBI agents seized at his Mar-a-Lago resort last week.
nypost.com nypost.com
Click to expand...
Ah I just came here to post this! I can’t stop laughing 😂
95CE9DE6-2239-4D18-BEE8-3A9F271CBC91.jpeg
 
Intercept has some piece up now saying that LBJ held back some archive-worthy papers too. But ya know I don't really like it that some people are pitching uninformed comparisons of the likes of LBJ holding back some papers to Trump's wholesale disregard for the Presidentidal Records Act AND for any underlying laws on classified documents and restricted data.

We don't yet know and may never know exactly what Trump even took (thanks to how sensitive some of the stuff apparently is or was), whether some of it was destroyed, who else has seen it but who should not have had access, and the possible adverse impact his actions may already have had on anyone or any country without their prior knowledge or expectation of danger. Also, the reforms with respect to presidential papers were not in effect when LBJ was president.

The more I think about this stuff, the more I am appalled that Trump managed to export documents at all to Mar a Lago (and apparently not return some he was legitimately able to have and examine in a SCIF down there while President), despite people in his own party and his aides knowing that he was not in the least trustworthy or careful about such things. Gotta love it that some of these aides figured to reveal these tidbits in their damn memoirs, or only now under deposition during these investigations....

He declassified stuff on the fly in some of his tweets without even meaning to do that, i.e. popping out a satellite photo that revealed we had capabilities for such photos that until then were not publicly known.​
​
"I guess that's not classified any more," was the rueful remark of some NSA guy after that incident.​
​
Yet the Republican leadership dismissed almost every misdeed of their nominal leader by shrugging it off as "well that's just Trump being Trump," with just a few exceptions, like when there was national uproar, e.g., after the Charlottesville incident and Trump went with his "both sides" argument and so won plaudits from white supremacists like David Duke and Richard B. Spencer.

It's one thing for Trump's base to shrug off Trump's misdeeds and norm-busting tweets and remarks, but another for officials in Congress with high level intel clearances themselves to brush off Trump's transgressions regarding document handling. They know better. Yet they bash the FBI and DoJ for going after missing documents that were known to be TS/SCI level? For shame.

I'm happy to see now that some R governors and members of Congress are starting to at least chide fellow Rs who have been badmouthing taw enforcement after the search warrant was executed at Mar a Lago.
 
the only time I remember them actually condemning trump was when he was with Putin and agreed with Putin about national security and what else I cant remember. but that was early on till everyone was numb and just let him do it.
 
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https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1558579480171614209/

These freaks are all over the place with their defenses of Trump. Funny, he didn’t call for laws against breaking your neighbor’s ribs to be repealed, but then I guess it wasn’t Trump who kicked his ass.

This guy’s gimmick of being in any way some sort of constitutionalist was always laughable, but he’s not even trying anymore.
 
I swear, if Trump did indeed shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, not only would he probably not lose votes - as he predicted - but these ass-kissing senators and representatives would probably diminish Trump‘s pulling of a gun’s trigger to “since when is moving a piece of metal a couple centimeters illegal? I used a paper clip yesterday, should I go to prison? We must repeal these laws that make taking your finger and applying pressure to metal illegal! They are rife for abuse!”
 
GermanSuplex said:
This guy’s gimmick of being in any way some sort of constitutionalist was always laughable, but he’s not even trying anymore.
Click to expand...

When dhId he ever claim to be a constitutionalist? As far as I can recall, he was always a dogmatic glibertarian, who believes that "I" should be free to do whatever I want as long as I do not perceive my actions as causing you any, and if you do anything that impairs my profits, you shall be subject to caning, pillory and possibly mutilation.

He is the leader of the "I want" Party.
 
GermanSuplex said:
What is the difference between running a private e-mail server or using your private email for official government business like Jared and Ivanka?
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I would think that’s just as illegal. I would argue an aide is a little different than the Secretary of State in terms the decisions and influence they have, but either way it shouldn’t be happening and is worthy of investigation. As I said before, it’s one violation to use private email, it’s an entirely worse one to destroy evidence. And Trump, like Clinton should be investigated regarding that.
 
fooferdoggie said:
till everyone was numb and just let him do it.
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That's been the most distinctive modus operandi of Trump all along. Shrug off criticism and move on to next outrage. Of course we have got numb. 30k documented public lies and counting... so what could "the truth" possibly be to a global society drowning in replays and relays of a former US president who construes "the truth" as whatever comes out of his mouth right now?

Mainstream papers of record here and abroad have been just as guilty as Fox News (and left-leaning counterparts) in terms of giving oxygen to Trump's distortions, falsehoods and divisive proclamations. The problem with disputing or challenging what the man has said is that one inevitably ends up relaying anew his lies and projections while making the effort to discredit them.

It's an almost insoluble problem really, and Trump takes comfort in that, although there are some ways to minimize spreading the guy's disinformation. I've noticed that more mainstream media outlets online and over cable have stopped quoting or carrying live much of the garbage Trump spouts at his rallies, and instead just report the date and location of the event and a few details about turnout, purpose of rally, names of candidates he was ostensibly there to promote, etc.

But Fox News remains an ugly problem for the USA, in that new studies have shown that far more people still acquire what passes as "news" these days from television than from social media, with Fox often the sole source of what passes for news for most right-leaning viewers.

www.niemanlab.org

Cable news has a much bigger effect on America’s polarization than social media, study finds

"Compared to online audiences, partisan TV news consumers tend not to stray too far from their narrow sets of preferred news sources."
www.niemanlab.org

Further, Fox persists on its talk show segments in peddling disinformation, misinformation, intentional hyping of anger and blaming "the radical left" for all of society's ills, even while downplaying misdeeds and fabrications by Trump via the social media outlet he formed after being banned by Twitter and Facebook. So there's a funneling effect for conservatively inclined TV viewers in the USA.

That and the fact that right wing social media users are extremely loud if not a significantly large segment of the USA population add up to a magnification of the power of Donald Trump. This is so even as his utility to the Republican Party wanes, and his hopeful base-inheritors jockey to take the reins, simultaneously trying to stay off Trump's radar so as not to enrage him and throw shade on their prospects.

For historians, sociologists and political scientists, the Trump era has been and remains fascinating. However, for the USA's externally perceived coherence as a vibrant, diverse country with a strong underlying sense of being "America", Trump's divisive influence remains a nightmare, with an ugly promise of not fading away any time soon, even as the man himself recedes from the public spotlight.

There's an old saw about how "we are what we eat". Updated to include information consumption, it runs as "we are what we read" (or, watch). For us to emerge from this self-destructive era, awash in the lies of Donald Trump, we have to quit being part of the problem, quit relaying his and his followers' lies and projections, quit inadvertently keeping him on a pedestal, start trying to get back to actual policy issues: what are the problems we share and must roll up sleeves to resolve? What are some ideas for solutions, how can they be made feasible by altering choices of private and public funding, how do we educate children to meet those challenges together?

How to do any of that while tackling the real threats of political violence and degradation of American democracy is a challenge. One can hardly let pass some of the monstrous lies offered up by this former president Trump and his craven supporters still in high places, never mind the swill circulating on social media. On the other hand just citing the garbage Trump spouts and his defenders shout at us nightly on TV does bring it to still more eyeballs and minds

It's the conundrum of the century so far: how to leave behind our addiction to outrage and cheap shots at each other?

Until we can figure that out we're not likely to make progress on identifying and solving our more concrete problems. But it must start with emerging from numbness and not just "letting Trump be Trump" any more. To my mind, the DoJ has fired the warning shot across Trump's bow on that score. Trump may finally have gone too far in his assumptions that he's above our rule of law.
 
I was having a conversation yesterday about how we are looking at more escalation in the short term from the same folks that believe the election was stolen. Seems I’m not the only one:

www.businessinsider.com

Ex-CIA analyst says fallout over raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago resembles the lead-up to the Capitol attack and predicts another 'catastrophic event'

Violent threats against law enforcement spiked as Republicans railed against the FBI's Mar-a-Lago raid and suggested regular citizens could be next.
www.businessinsider.com www.businessinsider.com
 

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