Now that we know a good deal more, much by inference, I have more thoughts on the FBI raid.
(1) This warrant is crap. It does not identify what justified the search. It is far too generic. I would not have granted it. It's possible the required affidavit says more, but why release a pointless warrant without it? That suggests DOJ wanted to fool the public, not enlighten the public.
(2) The fact they led with the copy of Roger Stone's clemency suggests a political motive. As I noted in my comment, you don't lead off with irrelevancies in a warrant, you lead off with the punch. This suggests they were angry or politically motivated. In fact, the utter lack of description of content regarding the secret documents suggest they don't even know what's in them... which is not a basis to go barrelling in.
(3) If the documents were a national security threat, why didn't they come get them already? That's terrible negligence by the government to leave genuinely dangerous documents out there. On the other hand, if they aren't genuinely dangerous, why get them this way, especially when the issue was being negotiated already and the documents have been stored the way the government requested? This reeks of thugism.
(4) Someone leaked the idea that these documents involved nuclear information. The Washington Post ran with it. That now seems utterly false, and the Post NEEDS to expose who told them that. It is unacceptable that someone in government would make that claim falsely. (And if it is true, I ask again why they waited to seize them?). This leak had the potential to destabilize a lot of countries and alliances and possibly lead to war, yet someone in the Biden administration happily made this apparently false leak just to get Trump. That's unacceptable. And the Post will be part of the cover-up if they don't dig into this and expose it.
(5) Trump's defense that he declassified these documents in BS, but it won't matter. Whether or not he gets charged, this will catapult him back to the top of the opposition. Getting elected is another matter, but if the intent was to kill him off, this tossed him an amazing lifeline. In fact, this will prove to a lot of people that the Government monolith is in conspiracy against him for being an outsider. I can't say that's wrong either.
(6) The next Republican President needs to go after Hunter and Joe Biden after this. Hunter had top secret documents he wasn't authorized to have (and could only have gotten from Joe) on a laptop overseas. That's far, far, far worse than anything Trump did. Father and son need to be in jail.
(7) I get the feeling there is a particularly dirty trick in all of this. We have been told some of the documents Trump took involved information about the President of France. The suggestion is this was information generated by espionage agencies and needed to be kept secret. Yet, the warrant does not identify this information as classified, suggesting it is something personal like a gift or letter or something that should go to the archives, but isn't sensitive. Once again, whoever leaked this information potentially wounded our relationship with France all to get Trump. That is unacceptable and needs to be answered.
(8) When I listen to DOJ's pronouncements, they are very much splitting legal hairs to such a degree that I can only conclude their conduct is designed to deceive. Unacceptable.
(9) There is no way Biden wasn't told. If his Attorney General knew, then Biden knew.
(10) This reeks of bubble thinking to me. You get a bunch of smug Washington insiders in a room and they start to spew their hate at Trump and their love of their turf and they work themselves in a lather over the idea that Trump broke some insider rule they see as sacrilege. The problem is, the public sees those rules as petty. I doubt very much at this point there will be anything in these documents the public will accept as sufficiently sensitive to justify this.
(11) There is no benefit of the doubt here. At this point, DOJ will need to provide detailed proof before I will believe anything in these documents is truly is sensitive. General descriptions are unacceptable.
(12) This was a huge mistake. A huge number of people no longer trust the government and doing this intensifies that and adds to those ranks. If DOJ wanted to be seen as credible this was the last thing they should have done. This is the sort of thing which undermines faith in government to such a degree that government starts to break down.
Thoughts?
(1) This warrant is crap. It does not identify what justified the search. It is far too generic. I would not have granted it. It's possible the required affidavit says more, but why release a pointless warrant without it? That suggests DOJ wanted to fool the public, not enlighten the public.
(2) The fact they led with the copy of Roger Stone's clemency suggests a political motive. As I noted in my comment, you don't lead off with irrelevancies in a warrant, you lead off with the punch. This suggests they were angry or politically motivated. In fact, the utter lack of description of content regarding the secret documents suggest they don't even know what's in them... which is not a basis to go barrelling in.
(3) If the documents were a national security threat, why didn't they come get them already? That's terrible negligence by the government to leave genuinely dangerous documents out there. On the other hand, if they aren't genuinely dangerous, why get them this way, especially when the issue was being negotiated already and the documents have been stored the way the government requested? This reeks of thugism.
(4) Someone leaked the idea that these documents involved nuclear information. The Washington Post ran with it. That now seems utterly false, and the Post NEEDS to expose who told them that. It is unacceptable that someone in government would make that claim falsely. (And if it is true, I ask again why they waited to seize them?). This leak had the potential to destabilize a lot of countries and alliances and possibly lead to war, yet someone in the Biden administration happily made this apparently false leak just to get Trump. That's unacceptable. And the Post will be part of the cover-up if they don't dig into this and expose it.
(5) Trump's defense that he declassified these documents in BS, but it won't matter. Whether or not he gets charged, this will catapult him back to the top of the opposition. Getting elected is another matter, but if the intent was to kill him off, this tossed him an amazing lifeline. In fact, this will prove to a lot of people that the Government monolith is in conspiracy against him for being an outsider. I can't say that's wrong either.
(6) The next Republican President needs to go after Hunter and Joe Biden after this. Hunter had top secret documents he wasn't authorized to have (and could only have gotten from Joe) on a laptop overseas. That's far, far, far worse than anything Trump did. Father and son need to be in jail.
(7) I get the feeling there is a particularly dirty trick in all of this. We have been told some of the documents Trump took involved information about the President of France. The suggestion is this was information generated by espionage agencies and needed to be kept secret. Yet, the warrant does not identify this information as classified, suggesting it is something personal like a gift or letter or something that should go to the archives, but isn't sensitive. Once again, whoever leaked this information potentially wounded our relationship with France all to get Trump. That is unacceptable and needs to be answered.
(8) When I listen to DOJ's pronouncements, they are very much splitting legal hairs to such a degree that I can only conclude their conduct is designed to deceive. Unacceptable.
(9) There is no way Biden wasn't told. If his Attorney General knew, then Biden knew.
(10) This reeks of bubble thinking to me. You get a bunch of smug Washington insiders in a room and they start to spew their hate at Trump and their love of their turf and they work themselves in a lather over the idea that Trump broke some insider rule they see as sacrilege. The problem is, the public sees those rules as petty. I doubt very much at this point there will be anything in these documents the public will accept as sufficiently sensitive to justify this.
(11) There is no benefit of the doubt here. At this point, DOJ will need to provide detailed proof before I will believe anything in these documents is truly is sensitive. General descriptions are unacceptable.
(12) This was a huge mistake. A huge number of people no longer trust the government and doing this intensifies that and adds to those ranks. If DOJ wanted to be seen as credible this was the last thing they should have done. This is the sort of thing which undermines faith in government to such a degree that government starts to break down.
Thoughts?
>I doubt very much at this point there will be anything in these documents the public will accept as sufficiently sensitive to justify this.
ReplyDeleteLike supporting affidavits too sensitive to release
Excellent post, particularly since I am not a lawyer. Like you, the potential for this to be like the tail of Peter Strzok and Lisa Paige
ReplyDeleteIs to great to be brushed aside as coincidence. — Jed
ReplyDeleteMy 2¢ take is that the reason for describing the documents as classified is to avoid having to describe them further.
ReplyDelete—tryanmax
tryanmax, That's exactly right. You will see this where people write pleadings using only the precisely required legal language: "Contacted the victim with a deadly weapon and malice aforethought." The thing is, the law is not supposed to allow that. Even in civil cases with what is called "notice pleading" (the lowest level of detail required in law) you still need to provide enough detail to put people on notice of what you actually mean.
ReplyDeleteThe judge never should have granted this warrant without some description to know what they are after. It doesn't have to be much but it needs to be more than the statutory language. For example, "top secret documents belonging to a defense agency" or "top secret documents taken from..." or "top secret documents of a ___ nature." They didn't do that. This never should have been granted.
Moreover, if the latest claim is be believed, this truly was a fishing expedition. The latest claim is they alleged "suspected obstruction." Said in layman's terms, that would be "we think he's not cooperating." That's true in every dispute. It's also not factual. The facts are why you suspected that. Allowing this lets the government get a warrant without any proof except their own unexplained suspicions.
Unknown, The detail better be in the affidavit, but they don't seem inclined to release that. Without that, this looks worse and worse every day, honestly.
ReplyDeleteJed, I think they avoided describing them because they didn't know. I think knew a couple things -- like the Stone document -- and some photos apparently, but the rest is a guess. They were told there were "X number of boxes containing all sorts of things he shouldn't have" and they described them as top secret to plead the crime and relied on the idea they had enough specificity with the first couple. Now they are trying to hide behind the "top secret" label, but the label is fake.
ReplyDelete