FBI Raid on Mar-A-Lago

[dorankj]

Morons! Let me guess, ‘the walls are closing in’!

[mister_coffee]

We all know that the "Hunter Biden laptop" story was disinformation. Only a particularly foolish toddler would think otherwise.

[just-jim]

You mean the same John Brennan who swore the Hunter Biden lap-top was Russian dis-information? You guys are just hopeless here!

In the face of a situation where we have an ex-president, who stole top secret items, lied about having them, tried to prevent their return and still insists he’s done no wrong….and, while, it appears there was a continuous troupe of potential bad actors that had access to his home.

….and all you got - in the defense of cheeto - is allegations about data on the laptop of someone who doesn’t hold office, never held office and never held any security clearance?

You are hopeless.

[dorankj]

You mean the same John Brennan who swore the Hunter Biden lap-top was Russian dis-information? You guys are just hopeless here!

[just-jim]

The reason is that I suspect there are a whole murder of spies in the above groups.

Bingo!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... ents-spies

“I know that national security professionals inside government, my former colleagues, [they] are shaking their heads at what damage might have been done,” John Brennan, former CIA director, told MSNBC.

“I’m sure Mar-a-Lago was being targeted by Russian intelligence and other intelligence services over the course of the last 18 or 20 months, and if they were able to get individuals into that facility, and access those rooms where those documents were and made copies of those documents, that’s what they would do.”

It sounds like Tubby’s home was a nest of thieves…..literally.

[mister_coffee]

So Mar-A-Lago has 87 employees. All of them should be interviewed and anybody who worked there after January 2021 should be interviewed as well. Their finances and any travel they did should be checked out as well. In particular, if anyone abruptly quit around the time the warrant was served I'd want to shine a very bright light on them.

After that go through all of the club members and their guests and do the same thing. Especially any guests who visited multiple times.

The reason is that I suspect there are a whole murder of spies in the above groups. And it will also piss Donald Trump off and that almost makes it worthwhile in and of itself. But this isn't even about getting the Orange Dingbat. This is about figuring out where those secrets might have gone.

[Rideback]

And in case anyone brings it up

https://www.nationalmemo.com/amp/hillar ... 2658142483

[just-jim]

[mister_coffee]

"... and boom, just like that, Donald is officially compost ...”

The technical term you are looking for is strict liability offense.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/strict_liability

Another interesting point is that when dealing with strict liability crimes mental incapacity is not a defense, since intent (aka mens rea) need not be proven.

[just-jim]

Here is the good side of the Rawstory piece posted by Rideback….

My buddy with the familiarity with Secret documents and their handling, wrote me, after I shared that news….

“…and boom, just like that, Donald is officially compost. Mere posession constitutes crimes for which there ain’t ANY defense. Even as The Prez, with all the authority that carries, for him to pry that info out of its custodian’s grasp and then go on walkabout with it shouldn’t have been possible. Either he bamboozled that custodian or that individual is rotten too. Either way, that’s 2 people bound for jail. More to come…..”

[just-jim]

Oh….just wonderful!

And yet, yesterday a judge - appointed by tubby - is going to allow guilty donnie a possible pass…

Next time you are the target of a criminal investigation, have your attorney ask for a ‘special master’.
See how far that gets you….after the prosecutors get done laughing.

It is without precedent,and the DOJ will hopefully appeal.

[Rideback]

WaPo reporting that among the classified docs the FBI found at MaL were TopSecret descriptions of a foreign country's nuclear capabilities.
Guessing which country this would be, France? Israel?

And how much would the Iranians be willing to pay or Putin?

https://www.rawstory.com/mar-a-lago-search-2658154057/

[Rideback]

I've read many recountings of the process which jibe with what you're saying. Apparently the PDB were hand carried to the Pres via electronically on an IPad and it's taken back by the officer after the briefing.

There's too many protocols that Trump's breech has broken for this not to be a Pandora's box of national security nightmares, with more to come. The fingerprinting lab at Quantico has got to be working overtime.

[just-jim]

I’ve been trying to understand how document security works at the top levels…..and how dumba$$ donnie got the documents to Florida. So, I reached out to an old college friend. He spent 30 years on the testing side of the spacecraft business for a large company (not Boeing) that also does defense work. He never had secret or higher clearance, a fact he says did limit his career. But, he did understand and work around a SCIF – Secure Compartmentalized Information Facility. His take:

Proprietary/“Competition Sensitive” was as deep as I was ever going to get, and by the time I’d been there awhile I was more than satisfied knowing that. Nevertheless, I got trained by guys who were about as friendly as Jack Webb on some of this stuff. Even though it was laid down emphatically that I would never be permitted into a SCIF, they wanted me to know enough to stay out of trouble, plus it removed any chance of me pleading ignorance if I got caught with a cookie in my hand anytime later.

The SCIF was serious stuff. No one was just casually allowed to enter – You left your phone and any other things outside. Then, you came thru locked doors into an airlock before you reached the working area. There was a vault where the secret stuff went when it wasn’t in use, and the Custodian of the vault brought stuff out or took it back and humorlessly logged its’ movement every f’ing time.
- It’s intended to be a closed-loop system with built-in alarms, and so somewhere there’s a log (now in the DOJ or FBI’s possession I’m sure) that accounts for when every doc left or entered the vault, and who the recipient shoulda been. If something left and was not returned, some stuff had a due date and alarms went off. Any every gap stands out.
- Discipline is enforced. My work stays on my desk, your work stays on yours. Nobody carries anything around themselves, and maybe someone might decide to follow along if you need to visit the toilet.
- At the end of each working shift the room is swept clean. Wastebaskets are emptied into burn bags and all desks are cleared. The vault is closed and the keeper of the vault declares nothing is out of place. Every single shift.

If a doc needs to move around outside of a SCIF, think about an interoffice memo. You will be able to track its progress: “From my hand to your hand”. That’s the law. The Courier witnesses the transfer and declares it left his hand once he’s passed it along. You sign, and say it’s in your hand now and accept responsibility. The courier and his gunsels don’t leave until that’s all set. It’s formal. If you’re drunk and dandling a foreign beauty on your knee, he won’t hand nuttin over.

Those folders and jackets (now empty?) were for moving the docs from one SCIF to a different one. They identified in general how incendiary the contents were, but by themselves they’d reveal little more. That was so if somehow one got loose and an idiot like me found it, I could turn it in without needing to see the contents and nobody would have to shoot me later. An empty one is a giant Red flag. They’ll cross check their logs to see what’s missing based on the classification info they bear. Also, sometimes, sometimes, the same as an interoffice memo, those were numbered or tagged to say which serialized copy of a limited distribution doc should have been inside. The logs will tell the tale.

So what this is telling me is that as things stand;
1.) Stupid donnie is guilty as hell, and
2.) there’s a whole string of staffers and functionaries who blew off their security roles as doc. Custodians or Couriers, egregiously. Why they placed their trust in someone as random as him we may never know…

They’re dead meat. Without any doubt, by now they’ve already had their psychological toenails pulled out and thru multiple grueling interviews they’ve recreated the entire route that every doc that EVER passed thru their hands may have taken. Some of them may be going up the river along with donnie, as a result.

All that evidence from the logs and their testimony is in the DOJ or the FBI’s hands, and sometime after the midterms all hell is going to break loose.

If donnie sold any of that info, not even God will be able to save him and whoever it was that helped him.

[Rideback]

And it gets worse, in the Trump Tower bar, behind glass is a classified folder

https://crooksandliars.com/2022/09/fold ... -bar-trump

[Rideback]

Bill Barr just set the record straight with Fox about the Mar a Lago search

https://www.thedailybeast.com/bill-barr ... w?ref=home

[mister_coffee]

43 empty Classified folders found in search. So where are the docs?

https://politicalwire.com/2022/09/02/tr ... tg=1259410

Curioser and curioser ...

So this brings up an ugly question: assuming that the Orange Idiot was selling those documents to somebody who doesn't like us very much, and he is now obviously burnt as a source of further documents, how long before they try to get rid of him? He's obviously bad at keeping his mouth shut and will equally obviously give up whomever he sold them to in order to save his own personal hide.

Assuming that he sold the documents to someone who doesn't like America very much, it also seems obvious to me that having the Dingbat of Mar-A-Lago turn up with a serious case of Dead would also be pretty likely to produce a lot of chaos here. So in that sense it kills two birds with one stone.

So I hope that the Secret Service is extra careful with that guy for the time being. It also probably argues that he should be held in the Supermax rather than a country-club prison if it comes to that.

[Rideback]

Ex AG Barr goes on Fox and calls BS on Trump's claims

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/02/politics ... index.html

[Rideback]

43 empty Classified folders found in search. So where are the docs?

https://politicalwire.com/2022/09/02/tr ... tg=1259410

[just-jim]

Read elsewhere…

In the ultimate irony…..both Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are facing extradition and/or trial in the US, on charges related to the taking of, and possessing classified and National Security documents; the same charge that guilty little donnie appears to be facing.
Previously, even before those two have even been tried, El Cheeto has called for them to be “executed”.

[Rideback]

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... urce=email

This morning, former president Trump told a Newsmax host that he was “financially supporting” some of the rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Calling it “disgraceful” that they are being prosecuted, he said that If reelected, he would look “very favorably at full pardons” for them and would apologize to them.

At a time when his supporters are increasingly calling for violence after the FBI executed a search warrant on the Trump Organization’s Mar-a-Lago property in order to recover classified documents, Trump is normalizing violence and suggesting that if he regains the presidency, he will protect those who fight on his behalf.

Today the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol wrote to former House speaker Newt Gingrich, asking him to appear before the committee voluntarily. Historians identify Gingrich’s rhetorical attacks on Democrats and on those Republicans he considered too moderate—Republicans in Name Only, or RINOs—as key to bleeding traditional Republicans out of party leadership in the 1990s.

The letter explained that the committee has learned that Gingrich was part of the effort to overturn the 2020 election. He apparently exchanged emails with Trump’s advisors, including Jason Miller and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, in which Gingrich provided “detailed input” on the scripting of television ads that deliberately pushed lies that the 2020 election was stolen. The ads encouraged people to pressure state officials to overturn the election.

Gingrich wrote: “The goal is to arouse the country’s anger through new verifiable information the American people have never seen before[.]... If we inform the American people in a way they find convincing and it arouses their anger[,] they will then bring pressure on legislators and governors.”

Gingrich was also apparently involved in the scheme to produce fake electors and did not let up even after the attack on the Capitol. That night, he emailed Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to pursue the plan.

Today, Emma Brown of the Washington Post reported that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, wrote not only to 29 lawmakers in Arizona to press them to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory by appointing their own electors rather than the ones the voters had chosen, but also to lawmakers in Wisconsin.

In Arizona, Jerod MacDonald-Evoy of the Arizona Mirror reported that Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters has hired two fake electors as part of his staff. Before the primary, Masters’s website read: “We need to get serious about election integrity. The 2020 election was a rotten mess—if we had had a free and fair election, President Trump would be sitting in the Oval Office today and America would be so much better off,” although he has since scrubbed it to read simply: “We need to get serious about election integrity.” Trump endorsed Masters.

Today the White House Twitter account reminded people that 147 congressional Republicans voted to challenge the results of the 2020 election even after the January 6 riot, retweeting the 2021 New York Times article listing them by name.

And yet there has been concern on Twitter tonight that President Joe Biden’s 24-minute prime-time speech on “The Continued Battle for the Soul of the Nation” was unfairly partisan.

Biden spoke from Philadelphia's Independence National Historical Park, which includes Independence Hall, where lawmakers created the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

There, the nation’s early leaders created a country based on equality and democracy, Biden said, and those principles made the United States “the greatest nation on Earth.” Now those principles are under assault, and “we do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise.”

Biden offered a passionate defense of democracy, recalling Americans to their heritage: a fight for liberty that has preserved the nation through wars, depressions, and struggles to expand civil rights. That mission still drives us, he said, toward “an America that is more prosperous, free, and just.”

But “we must be honest with each other and with ourselves.”

Things are not normal, he said. And then he called out the elephant in the room: “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”

As he has done in similar comments lately, Biden isolated the extremist MAGA Republicans from the rest of the country, while including mainstream Republicans in the larger body of Americans who still believe in democracy. But he acknowledged the truth that “the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country.”

They “do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.”

They “are determined to take this country backwards—backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love. They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.”

We are not powerless to combat these threats, Biden said. Far more Americans reject the extremism of MAGA Republicans than embrace it. He called for all Americans—”Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans”—to reject government by violence, and instead work together to defend democracy and build a better future, one based in the Constitution, the rule of law, free and fair elections, the will of the people, honesty, decency, respect, patriotism, liberty, justice, hope, and possibility.

Biden listed the accomplishments of the past year and a half and echoed the line he has used since he ran for president: “There is not a single thing America cannot do—not a single thing beyond our capacity if we do it together.”

“The soul of America is defined by the sacred proposition that all are created equal in the image of God. That all are entitled to be treated with decency, dignity, and respect. That all deserve justice and a shot at lives of prosperity and consequence. And that democracy…must be defended, for democracy makes all these things possible. Folks, and it’s up to us.”

Our democracy is imperfect, Biden said, but “history and common sense tell us that opportunity, liberty, and justice for all are most likely to come to pass in a democracy.” “Our task,” he said, “is to make our nation free and fair, just and strong, noble and whole.”

“We just need to remember who we are. We are the United States of America.”

[Rideback]

Indeed Wed's filing by team Trump barely met the standards of a legal doc and ignored any of the substantive arguments and facts that the DoJ team gave. Instead, it followed the old political strategy of answer the questions you want asked so you can frame the argument. That may work on Fox and Truth Social but in a court of law where the truth is upheld (not to mention Trump himself countering within hours the arguments and statements made).

You know your team is in over their heads when their argument is based on the wishful logic that of course Trump took the docs, he liked the memories.

[mister_coffee]

I think the problem here is that Trump and his people seem to think this is a public relations problem and not a criminal justice problem. There just doesn't seem any concept that what was done here was against the law, in fact multiple laws. From their standpoint it just kind of looks bad and they are trying to deflect.

Not agreeing or disagreeing or saying they are right or wrong -- that just seems to be how they see it.

[just-jim]

From Heather Cox Richardson’s column, tonight:

….first a quote from cheeto: “There seems to be confusion as to the ‘picture’ where documents were sloppily thrown on the floor and then released photographically for the world to see, as if that’s what the FBI found when they broke into my home. Wrong! They took them out of cartons and spread them around on the carpet….”

Then, further from HCR;

“Lawyers point out that this is an admission that he had the documents and knew it. His lawyer Alina Habba then went onto the Fox News Channel to complain about the photo and said, “I’m somebody who has been in his office…. I do have firsthand knowledge…. I have never, ever, seen that…. That is not the way his office looks…. He has guests frequently there.”

His office had classified information in it, and his lawyer just said he entertains guests there. This is an intelligence nightmare.”


Literally, you cant make this stuff up…..El lardo just keeps blundering around shooting himself in the foot!
And he hires idiot attorneys - who ALSO don’t know when to shut up.

[Rideback]

It was a special election House seat to replace Don Young, but an absolutely blockbuster C-Change for Alaska politics. And then there was the race in NY that the Dem won last week that was supposed to be a shoe in for the Rep. More and more Rep candidates are wiping their websites of Trump endorsements and his stolen election claims.