FBI executes search warrant at Mar-A-Lago

[*Nately120*]

(08-10-2022, 12:20 PM)Dill Wrote: The DOJ goes after people who break the law.

But it leaves people who don't break the law alone.

That has too look like a double standard from the MAGA viewpoint. 

Hmm, it'll be interesting to see the MAGA folks finally have to deal with one of those. 

[hollodero]

(08-10-2022, 12:07 PM)Sled21 Wrote: It will be very interesting to see the warrant return and listen to the explanation the GOP is demanding. I'd have loved to have been there when they brought the safe cracker in and opened Trumps empty safe. Al Capone's Vault all over again.....

Are we supposed to root for Al Capone?

[CJD]

All it took for the Republicans to join the Defund the Police movement was for their criminal ex-president to be investigated

[Belsnickel]

(08-10-2022, 12:04 PM)Sled21 Wrote: See, you do not understand how it works. The FBI came out and said they didn't feel like Clinton meant to do it, so they would not prosecute what were multiple clear violations of the law dealing with classified material. This is not the FBI's place. They are supposed to investigate and present it to a Federal Prosecutor who then makes the decision. Her case was never presented. Clear politics.  Hunter Biden and his father are under investigation for tax and pay for play. The already know he is guilty of the firearms violations, they have the gun, they have the paperwork he falsified to buy it. He should be in prison. Clear politics. And Wray may be a Trump appointed Director, but he works for Garland, who clearly is still butt hurt over the SC deal. 

I know exactly how it works, and it was referred to the DoJ with the recommendation charges not be pursued. The prosecutor can make a different decision. You seem to be unfamiliar with these machinations. They may have one thing on Hunter Biden, but they will continue the investigation to determine what else they can do. They can look for leverage, decide what the strongest cases are, etc. This is nothing outside of the norm.

And Garland is extremely careful and has shown no sign of being "butt hurt."

[BigPapaKain]

(08-10-2022, 12:07 PM)Sled21 Wrote: It will be very interesting to see the warrant return and listen to the explanation the GOP is demanding. I'd have loved to have been there when they brought the safe cracker in and opened Trumps empty safe. Al Capone's Vault all over again.....

Interesting comparison, given how guilty Al Capone was.

[*Nately120*]

(08-10-2022, 01:02 PM)BigPapaKain Wrote: Interesting comparison, given how guilty Al Capone was.

And how often liberals want Geraldo to fall on his face. 

[*pally*]

It is funny to realize that to MAGA media that Jan 6th was normal tourism and the Mar a Lago search warrant is a declaration of Civil War

[BigPapaKain]

(08-10-2022, 01:07 PM)pally Wrote: It is funny to realize that to MAGA media that Jan 6th was normal tourism and the Mar a Lago search warrant is a declaration of Civil War

Violent breach of the Capitol which resulted in an actual body count - tourists who got riled up

Lawful search and seizure - WAR!!!!

The last few years have proven some mother ***** are gold medalists in mental gymnastics.

[Leon]

ive been pretty clear saying i think the jan 6 commiittee was a waste of time and money just like the muller stuff cause its all just going in circles and nothing real was ever gonna come out of either as far as trump.

this is differnt though. it trump really did take a bunch of classified material and they found it in his property. thats not a good thing. pretty stupid actualy. you just cant do that. im still waiting to hear exactly what they found though

[Sled21]

(08-10-2022, 12:20 PM)Dill Wrote:
The DOJ goes after people who break the law.

But it leaves people who don't break the law alone.

That has too look like a double standard from the MAGA viewpoint. 

Then why is Hunter not in prison for falsifying documentation to buy a firearm. Dems want more gun laws right? How about we prosecute him??? Oh, wait, he's one of the untouchables. How about we go after Pelosi for insider trading? Oh wait, untouchable. How about we go after Swallwell (or however you spell his name) for sleeping with the Chinese Spy Fang Fang and spilling secrets over pillow talk. Nope, don't want to look at that, he has a D after his name. The list goes on and on....

[Sled21]

(08-10-2022, 12:32 PM)hollodero Wrote: Are we supposed to root for Al Capone?

I'm not rooting for anyone, but funny is funny.  And you can believe if they found anything at all that was incriminating they would have leaked it by now....

[GMDino]

(08-10-2022, 02:01 PM)Sled21 Wrote: Then why is Hunter not in prison for falsifying documentation to buy a firearm. Dems want more gun laws right? How about we prosecute him??? Oh, wait, he's one of the untouchables. How about we go after Pelosi for insider trading? Oh wait, untouchable. How about we go after Swallwell (or however you spell his name) for sleeping with the Chinese Spy Fang Fang and spilling secrets over pillow talk. Nope, don't want to look at that, he has a D after his name. The list goes on and on....

Was all of that really "not looked into"?

[Sled21]

(08-10-2022, 01:50 PM)Leon Wrote: ive been pretty clear saying i think the jan 6 commiittee was a waste of time and money just like the muller stuff cause its all just going in circles and nothing real was ever gonna come out of either as far as trump.

this is differnt though. it trump really did take a bunch of classified material and they found it in his property. thats not a good thing. pretty stupid actualy. you just cant do that. im still waiting to hear exactly what they found though

Hillary did..... nothing happened to her. That's my whole point. I just want both sides to play by the same rules.

[Sled21]

(08-10-2022, 02:06 PM)GMDino Wrote: Was all of that really "not looked into"?

I do not believe they ever looked into, nor will this administration look into Pelosi and her husband buying and selling stocks with insider information, but if anyone thinks old Paul is that good a guesser of what stocks to buy and when to sell them I have this bridge I'd like to sell you.
They have turned a blind eye to Hunter and his gun. Everyone admits it, no one will charge him. 
It's well documented Hillary had extensive classified documents on her private unsecure server, and that she had used unsecure email to communicate them with her secretary, old what's her name who was married to the degenerate Anthony Weiner. No charges.

[masonbengals fan]

(08-10-2022, 02:08 PM)Sled21 Wrote: Hillary did..... nothing happened to her. That's my whole point. I just want both sides to play by the same rules.

That should be what we all want. 

Only thing we can do is wait & see what this is all about. Speculation is just that.

My question is what we (As a country) do about it if this is all just a fishing expedition ? And no, I'm not saying that's what it is. They think they have something or they wouldn't have taken such a bold step. But what if they don't ?

[Leon]

(08-10-2022, 02:08 PM)Sled21 Wrote: Hillary did..... nothing happened to her. That's my whole point. I just want both sides to play by the same rules.

i agree with that for sure. my point is if trump did have that stuff then i dont know what the heck he was thinking. it was stupid when hilary did it and it is if trump did it. like you said hilary didnt go to jail so its funny seeing many on the left wanting trump in jail for it

[*pally*]

(08-10-2022, 02:01 PM)Sled21 Wrote: Then why is Hunter not in prison for falsifying documentation to buy a firearm. Dems want more gun laws right? How about we prosecute him??? Oh, wait, he's one of the untouchables. How about we go after Pelosi for insider trading? Oh wait, untouchable. How about we go after Swallwell (or however you spell his name) for sleeping with the Chinese Spy Fang Fang and spilling secrets over pillow talk. Nope, don't want to look at that, he has a D after his name. The list goes on and on....

Thinking something is one thing...proving it is another.

It is not illegal to sleep with someone who turned out to be a spy.  There is also zero evidence any "secrets" were spilled over pillow talk.  

[GMDino]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/09/us/politics/fbi-search-trump.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqYhkQFUbCibIRp8_qRmHmfnE2_syjH67NyWcUz1CivgPHo2YvUfRYK4pL_0C4wOmfv4Terk-WK41ieZFI01mTwTv_MDexsgJKitwpNjrDyZrh8OcGOE1_TKvMmfiJL4unOGztRiPenCqDPKEqQApIwpuo5FidFy4izdfluqeTLkDipQp1uwhB5t6WT4KeCGI2vDoAB1-M9yMBQrOvkh0A6oKHGGOwqPPru4IYw5QClnZTXJg4mta6dhUONgfPaeXPAdkicRUWvtBysBI8B4GNNJG&smid=nytcore-ios-share

Quote:F.B.I. Search of Trump’s Home Pushes Long Conflict Into Public View

Justice Department officials were worried that the former president had not fully complied with requests to return material taken from the White House that included possible classified information.


By Maggie Haberman, Ben Protess, Michael S. Schmidt, Luke Broadwater and William K. Rashbaum
Aug. 9, 2022

The search carried out on Monday by the F.B.I. at former President Donald J. Trump’s Florida home, a law enforcement action with explosive legal and political implications, was the culmination of a lengthy conflict between a president proud of his disdain for rules and officials charged with protecting the nation’s records and secrets.

On one side were officials from the National Archives, which is responsible for making sure all presidential records are preserved according to the law, and the Justice Department, which some people familiar with the inquiry said had grown concerned about the whereabouts of possible classified information and whether Mr. Trump’s team was being fully forthcoming.

On the other was Mr. Trump, who, in apparent contravention of the Presidential Records Act, had taken a trove of material with him to his home at Mar-a-Lago when he left the White House that included sensitive documents — and then, in the Justice Department’s view, had failed to fully comply with requests that he return the disputed material.

After the investigation bubbled along largely out of public view for months, word that agents had arrived early Monday morning at the gates of Mar-a-Lago with a search warrant raised new questions about Mr. Trump’s vulnerability to prosecution and fueled further partisan division.

Mr. Trump’s aides and allies intensified their criticism of the search on Tuesday, calling it unnecessary and asserting, without citing any evidence, that it was a brazen use of prosecutorial power for political purposes. On his social media site on Tuesday, Mr. Trump cast the search as part of “a coordinated attack” that also includes local and state prosecutors, alluding to investigations into him being carried out in Georgia and New York.

Christina Bobb, a lawyer and aide to Mr. Trump who said she received a copy of the search warrant, told one interviewer that the agents were looking for “presidential records or any possibly classified material.”

At the White House, President Biden’s press secretary said he had no advance word of the decision to carry out the search, and at the Justice Department, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland maintained public silence about the momentous step.

Despite Mr. Trump’s suggestions that an army of agents raided Mar-a-Lago and stormed through his home, the F.B.I. conducted the search on a day when Mr. Trump was out of town and the club was closed. The agents carried out the search in a relatively low-key manner, people with knowledge of the matter said; by some accounts they were not seen donning the conspicuous navy-blue jackets with the agency’s initials emblazoned on the back that are commonly worn when executing search warrants.

Another person familiar with the search said agents began going through a storage unit, where items like beach chairs and umbrellas are kept, in the basement. They progressed to his office, which was built for him on the second floor of the main house, where they cracked a hotel-style safe that was said by two people briefed on the search to contain nothing of consequence to the agents.

Then they moved to Mr. Trump’s residence, the person said.

Ultimately, they removed a number of boxes of documents, people familiar with the search said.

It is not clear what the agents were looking for or what they took. Nor is it clear whether the search was carried out simply to ensure that the documents and other material were properly turned over to the archives or it was a possible precursor to a prosecution of Mr. Trump for mishandling classified material or obstructing efforts to get it back.

Throughout his presidency, Mr. Trump was disdainful of record-preservation laws, and was known to tear up documents and in some cases to flush them down toilets. It is not clear whether he sought to hold onto material sought by the archives and the Justice Department to keep it away from public scrutiny or for some other reason.

A close look at the investigation, though, shows how it has been quietly picking up steam for much of this year, introducing a new element into the questions about Mr. Trump’s varied and intensifying legal problems and his political viability even as he hints at another run for the presidency.

For many months before he left office, Mr. Trump would tell aides to bring documents up to the residence for him while he was in the Oval Office, and they complied, but there was no process in place, meaning that officials whose job it was to keep track of paperwork did not always know exactly what had gone up there, according to people familiar with the events.

By the end of his presidency, and as Mr. Trump was fighting to overturn his election loss, some of his aides were concerned with preserving the work of the office itself. His habit of transporting material around in cardboard boxes, with either a personal aide or a valet carrying them, was well known, but the contents were not always clear.

Discussions were held within the White House by top staff members about how to get Mr. Trump to surrender his boxes, people familiar with the events said; it is unclear whether Mr. Trump was ever asked directly or officials simply did not take the issue to him.

When he left the White House, Mr. Trump took the boxes with him to Mar-a-Lago, packed with paperwork including letters from the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and the former president’s “Sharpie-gate” map of the path of a hurricane, along with personal items like golf balls and a rain coat and various other things stuffed in.


The National Archives, whose mission is to preserve government documents, determined last year that many important presidential documents that archivists knew existed were missing and believed to be in Mr. Trump’s possession.

That set off a lengthy back and forth between the National Archives and Mr. Trump’s lawyers about what documents he might have taken. Mr. Trump’s unwillingness to quickly hand over the documents frustrated archives officials, who had grown deeply skeptical throughout the Trump administration that he and his aides followed federal record keeping laws.

For the rest of 2021, Mr. Trump resisted requests to give back the material. In the meantime, Mr. Trump would wave things like the North Korean leader’s letters at people, as if they were collectors’ items he was showing off.

In January of this year, an official for the National Archives flew to Florida and retrieved 15 boxes of documents, gifts and other government property.

When archivists went through the boxes, they found several documents containing sensitive national security information, including some marked classified.

The archivists also discovered that Mr. Trump had not returned several documents that they believed the former president had in his possession. Around this time, the National Archives alerted the Justice Department that it was concerned about the handling of the classified documents, which are closely tracked by the government and are supposed to remain within secure channels.

By this spring, the Justice Department had taken a range of steps that showed it was conducting an investigation into what happened with the classified documents, as prosecutors issued a subpoena to the National Archives to obtain the boxes and convened a grand jury, whose term was later extended past its initial expiration date.

Investigators began contacting possible witnesses, including Molly Michael, an assistant to Mr. Trump, signaling that they were seeking information from people close to the former president. A lawyer for Ms. Michael declined to comment.

During the spring, a group of federal investigators, including the Justice Department’s top counterintelligence official, Jay Bratt, traveled to Mar-a-Lago. Mr. Trump met with them briefly, and lawyers for Mr. Trump were present.

In an interview on Tuesday with the right-wing channel Real America’s Voice, Ms. Bobb said she and other Trump lawyers had been “extremely cooperative” with the F.B.I. during a previous visit when agents were given “free access” to the building.

After Mr. Bratt and other officials visited Mar-a-Lago, they subpoenaed the Trump Organization for a copy of Mar-a-Lago’s surveillance tapes, a person with knowledge of the matter said. The company complied, turning over the tapes to the government.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers also sifted through his records at Mar-a-Lago to determine whether he still was holding onto anything classified or sensitive. In the course of that process, Mr. Trump’s team made statements to the Justice Department about what Mr. Trump had returned.


But in recent weeks, officials came to question whether that information was entirely accurate — and whether Mr. Trump continued to store sensitive documents at Mar-a-Lago, one of the people said. It is unclear whether the department conveyed that concern to Mr. Trump’s team.

Mr. Trump and his aides have made clear that they were taken by surprise when the agents showed up at Mar-a-Lago with a search warrant on Monday.

A person with knowledge of the matter said the warrant was approved by a federal magistrate judge, Bruce Reinhart, a former federal prosecutor and defense lawyer. Magistrate judges are selected by district court judges, meaning that they are not political appointees. It is common for magistrates to review search warrant applications.

The warrant was obtained by prosecutors with the Justice Department’s national security division, which at the request of the National Archives has been leading the investigation into whether the materials were improperly removed and stored, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.

The F.B.I. left behind a detailed manifest of all the materials that were removed, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

Glenn Thrush and Katie Benner contributed reporting.


Correction: Aug. 9, 2022
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of a picture caption with this article misidentified where in Florida former President Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is. It is in Palm Beach, not Palm Springs.

[Belsnickel]

(08-10-2022, 02:08 PM)Sled21 Wrote: Hillary did..... nothing happened to her. That's my whole point. I just want both sides to play by the same rules.

Just have to point out that it was Trump himself who signed the law to make it a felony. Prior to that it was a misdemeanor at best, usually just an administrative issue though. So comparing the treatment to Hillary isn't a good one because under the prior law her activity, if criminal, would not have been as serious.

[GMDino]

(08-10-2022, 02:12 PM)Sled21 Wrote: I do not believe they ever looked into, nor will this administration look into Pelosi and her husband buying and selling stocks with insider information, but if anyone thinks old Paul is that good a guesser of what stocks to buy and when to sell them I have this bridge I'd like to sell you.
They have turned a blind eye to Hunter and his gun. Everyone admits it, no one will charge him. 
It's well documented Hillary had extensive classified documents on her private unsecure server, and that she had used unsecure email to communicate them with her secretary, old what's her name who was married to the degenerate Anthony Weiner. No charges.

So I looked up the gun story.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/25/sources-secret-service-inserted-itself-into-case-of-hunter-bidens-gun-477879


A couple things caught my eye:

In 2018 when Biden was not under SS protection someone claiming to be SS asked for the paperwork from the purchase.  That's weird as Trump was in office and why would they want to cover up for hunter?

Secondly this quote:

Quote:POLITICO obtained copies of the Firearms Transaction Record and a receipt for the gun dated Oct. 12, 2018.


Hunter responded “no” to a question on the transaction record that asks, “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?” Five years earlier, he had been discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine, and he and family members have spoken about his history of drug use.


Lying on the form is a felony, though prosecutions for it are exceedingly rare.

I'm going to suppose that this is one of those things where the governing body chooses when and where to enforce the law because there would be so many to go after.  But I don't know.

So I'm not sure who "they" are but nonetheless his not being prosecuted falls into the "rare" category I guess.

On the trading, I have been against members of congress and their spouses trading because whether they "know" anything or not there will always be the appearance of illegality.  Much like I wanted Trump to completely divest of his businesses.

And for Clinton, well, I'll just leave it as it wouldn't matter what I said because over six years of "lock her up" chants has made it hard to convince anyone who believes that any different.

Lastly not a single one of those things has any bearing on what happened with Trump as he signed the law that he broke.