Capitol Hill Blue Forums Hot Topics & Breaking News News The Raid at Mar-a-Lago

I thought a separate thread for this discussion was in order. This is historic. The Department of Justice and a federal judge determined that a former President had EVIDENCE OF A CRIME at his home. Moreover, the powers that be determined that he was not trustworthy enough to use less coercive measures and/or the likelihood that such evidence might be destroyed if knowledge if the search were disclosed in advance.

That is astounding. That is an official acknowledgement by two branches of the government that the former President is untrustworthy. Wow.

I'm going to bring some other material here to flesh out the discussion, but I wanted to get this party started.

Mara-Largo is closed for the summer. The raid took place when Trump, the USSS and Trump’s security detail were not there. All indications are this raid is related to the National Archives haul that Trump took from the White House. Apparently, not everything was returned.

Trump is in NYC currently because he is testifying in the NY AG Letitia James' investigation of inflating his property values to obtain favorable loans from banks, and decreasing the property values to pay less tax.

Having his bed bug infested compound. erm, "beautiful home" raided the night before his big under-oath testimony has got to rattle the orange fella.

This is yet another "in the fullness of time" things. I just hope they have something that can be done in the next couple of years or it dies.

Remember, Trump was trained by daddy to never to keep anything in writing - its a criminal rule. Destroying any evidence is a thing he seems to have done with regularity. We have been told he burns them, flushes them down the toilet, etc. Its about the only thing he hasn't screwed up yet.

And what is missing is going to be quite interesting.

It was a beautiful raid. A perfect raid. People tell me they've never seen such a perfect raid. They're coming up to me and saying "Sir, I've seen raids before but yours is the biggest in history."
Bigly. Huge.

Trump's toilet then:


And now:
[img]https://www.flickr.com/photos/super_davidc/3834608439[/img]

I think it is important to strip the situation of political overtones (and there are plenty), and look at it strictly as a criminal matter:

"It is a federal crime to remove classified documents wrongly. And so if you are filling out that affidavit [for the search warrant] and you have to list the crime, you can list that as the crime," said Elie Honig, a former federal and state prosecutor and a CNN senior legal analyst.

"The National Archives, charged with collecting and sorting presidential material, has previously said at least 15 boxes of White House records were recovered from Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort -- including some that were classified. (National Archives acknowledges clas...s at Mar-a-Lago after Trump left office (CNN)).

In early June, a handful of investigators made a rare visit to the property seeking more information about potentially classified material from Trump's time in the White House that had been taken to Florida. The four investigators, including Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterintelligence and export control section at the Justice Department, sat down with two of Trump's attorneys, Bobb and Evan Corcoran, according to a source present for the meeting.
....
Five days later, on June 8, Trump's attorneys received a letter from investigators asking them to further secure the room where the documents were stored.
....
In April and May, aides to Trump at Mar-a-Lago were interviewed by the FBI as part of the probe into the handling of presidential records, according to a source familiar with the matter."FBI executes search warrant at Trump's Mar-a-Lago in document investigation (CNN)

Rwingers are fit to be tied. They think it was no problem that Trump was in possession of national security documents at MaL.

I think the more interesting thing is the reactions of many to the search. They are completely ignoring 18 USC 2383:


There are more statutes and the 14th Amendment section 3 with this same "gives aid or comfort" language. All of these people giving aid or comfort to insurrectionists are pretending like those don't exist, and risking federal prison and disqualification from ever holding office again. And I don't think an insurrectionist President can pardon that disqualification, because it says right in the 14th Amendment that requires a supermajority of congress. (He could free them from prison, of course.)

It will be interesting to see if the Justice Department gets around to these crimes eventually. I think they could end a lot of this continued insurrection pretty damned quick if they did start indicting people. They could even offer deals of probation and disqualification in exchange for a guilty plea.