Right Wing Granny

News behind the news. This picture is me (white spot) standing on the bridge connecting European and North American tectonic plates. It is located in the Reykjanes area of Iceland. By-the-way, this is a color picture.

Right Wing Granny

Tag Archives: raid on Mar-a-Lago

More Skullduggery Uncovered

Posted on by

Yesterday I posted an article espousing the theory that the raid on Mar-a-Lago was really about the FBI wanting to recover information that incriminated the Obama administration for spying on the Trump campaign. There was another article posted at Substack yesterday that gave further credence to that theory.

The Substack article reported:

Last December 15th, as Americans decorated trees, lit Menorahs, and prepared to tune out for winter holidays, CNN ran an extraordinary article titled, “The mystery of the missing binder: How a collection of raw Russian intelligence disappeared under Trump.”

Co-authored by Natasha Bertrand, the gargantuan exposé claimed a mysterious “binder” of “highly classified information related to Russian election interference” went “missing” in the chaotic waning days of Donald Trump’s presidency in January 2021, raising concerns that some of America’s most “closely guarded national security secrets… could be exposed.”

CNN and its intelligence sources meant “exposure” in a bad way. Sources have told Public and Racket, however, that the secrets officials worry might be “exposed” are ones that would implicate them in widespread abuses of intelligence authority dating back to the 2015-2016 election season.

“I would call [the binder] Trump’s insurance policy,” said someone knowledgeable about the case. “He was very concerned about having it and taking it with him because it was the road map” of Russiagate.

Transgressions range from Justice Department surveillance of domestic political targets without probable cause to the improper unmasking of a pre-election conversation between a Trump official and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to WMD-style manipulation of intelligence for public reports on alleged Russian “influence activities.”

The CNN report claimed intelligence officials were concerned about the disclosure of “sources and methods that informed the U.S. government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election.”

They should be concerned. The story of how a team “hand-picked” by CIA Director John Brennan relied on “cooked intelligence” to craft that January 6th, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment is the subject of tomorrow’s story, the last in this three-part series.

Corruption, not tradecraft, is what officials are desperate to keep secret.

I rather doubt the mainstream media will cover this unless they absolutely have to. Meanwhile, please follow the link to read the entire article. It really isn’t surprising, but it is alarming that a group of people inside our government felt entitled to determine the results of an election regardless of the will of the voters.

Troubling, But Not Surprising

Posted on by

On Tuesday, PJ Media reported the following:

New information is being uncovered regarding the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s unprecedented raid of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home last year. According to America First Legal (AFL), a judicial watchdog, an investigation of the raid confirmed that the FBI gained access to NARA records through a “special access request” made by the Biden White House on behalf of the Department of Justice.

“On August 8, 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conducted an unprecedented raid of Mar-a-Lago on the ground that potentially classified records existed there. According to press reports, Biden Administration aides were “stunned” to hear of this development,” AFL begins in a press release. “However, new NARA records obtained through America First Legal’s investigation into the circumstances surrounding the Mar-a-Lago raid further confirmed that the FBI obtained access to these records through a ‘special access request’ from the Biden White House on behalf of the Department of Justice (DOJ).”

According to AFL, it appears that “the Biden White House and DOJ coordinated to obtain the Trump records and perhaps create a pretext for the law enforcement raid by way of the ‘special access request.’”

In addition to confirming that the White House was involved in setting up Trump, AFL also proves that the National Archives misled Congress about the role the White House played in the raid.

Under President Obama and President Biden we have seen a lot of political use of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). However, the raid on Mar-a-Lago was a new low in unbiased justice. Please follow the link and read the article for further details. If no one is held accountable, no one in America will be able to criticize the ruling party without having the judicial system investigate or intimidate them. We are not heading in a good direction.

When Cooler Heads Don’t Prevail

Posted on by

On Wednesday, Red State posted an article about the raid on Mar-a-Lago. The Red State article heavily quotes an article from The Washington Post.

The Washington Post reports:

Months of disputes between Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents over how best to try to recover classified documents from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and residence led to a tense showdown near the end of July last year, according to four people familiar with the discussions.

Prosecutors argued that new evidence suggested Trump was knowingly concealing secret documents at his Palm Beach, Fla., home and urged the FBI to conduct a surprise raid at the property. But two senior FBI officials who would be in charge of leading the search resisted the plan as too combative and proposed instead to seek Trump’s permission to search his property, according to the four people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive investigation.

Prosecutors ultimately prevailed in that dispute, one of several previously unreported clashes in a tense tug of war between two arms of the Justice Department over how aggressively to pursue a criminal investigation of a former president. The FBI conducted an unprecedented raid on Aug. 8, recovering more than 100 classified items, among them a document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities.

First of all, I question the list The Washington Post is providing. Has that information ever been made public?

Red State notes:

The FBI was criticized by both sides during those debacles—Hillary almost had a coronary in 2016 over then-FBI Director James Comey’s handling of her illegal server which contained classified information. Yet, her home was never raided, and she never faced charges. It doesn’t take a partisan to point out that there seem to be two systems of justice at play here.

The article at Red State concludes:

As we all know, the FBI’s concerns fell on deaf ears, and the raid went ahead as planned. The fact that there was such internal division within the DOJ shows that the surprise offensive was always politicized and heavy-handed. Merrick Garland has repeatedly shown in his term that he values politics over justice, and he will continue to act that way till he’s called to account.

There are currently two systems of justice in America. I am not sure how much longer that will last before it becomes a major problem.

Have The Republicans Learned To Play Hardball?

Posted on by

On Thursday, The Epoch Times posted an article about the oversight efforts of the Republicans in the House of Representatives. The Republicans are getting very little help from the Justice Department in their investigations. In fact, you might even say that they are being stonewalled.

The article reports:

Anger and frustration were the feelings expressed by bipartisan members of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Jan. 25 over a lack of access to the classified documents found in the homes of President Joe Biden, former President Trump, and former Vice President Mike Pence.

Speaking with reporters at the Capitol after a classified briefing with National Intelligence Director Avril Haines, Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Vice Chairman Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) asserted that the Biden administration had been blocking their oversight efforts.

“It is our responsibility to make sure that we, in the role of the intelligence oversight, know if there’s been any intelligence compromised,” Warner noted.

Members of Congress have sought access to the materials—or at least a risk assessment detailing the information they contained—since the discovery of documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last summer. But they say the administration has objected, arguing they can’t provide that access as two special counsels at the Justice Department (DOJ) are investigating Trump and Biden’s mishandlings of the documents.

Rubio, however, said the administration’s position was “untenable,” noting, “The information we’re asking for has no bearing whatsoever or would interfere in no way with a criminal investigation.”

It also defies precedent, the senators argued, as during the DOJ’s Russia investigation, committees were given access to the classified materials that were part of then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.

Warner, noting that there was broad agreement among the committee members on the matter, added, “Literally every member of the committee, without exception, said this won’t stand.”

On Friday, Townhall reported:

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said he and other Republicans will block presidential nominees until members of the Intelligence Committee are shown the classified material found at former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence as well as President Biden’s home and office.

Please follow the links and read both articles for further details. The thing to be aware of is that the desire to see the documents is bi-partisan. I believe that we are looking at Democrats wanting to prevent President Biden from running in 2024. If you watch carefully, you will see leading Democrats quietly removing their support of the President as the major media begins to report his scandals and missteps.

 

Is Anyone Really Surprised?

Posted on by

On Wednesday, PJ Media posted an article about the August 8 raid the Trump estate at Mar-a-Lago. It has become more obvious that the Democrats were hoping to find something that would end the support for President Trump. Well, aside from using the Department of Justice for political purposes, the Democrats have been left with egg of their faces.

The article quotes The Washington Post. The headline in The Washington Post article is:

Investigators see ego, not money, as Trump’s motive on classified papers

Seems a bit snarky to me. If you had been President, wouldn’t you save mementos of significant things that had happened during your presidency or things that you were proud of accomplishing?

The article at The Washington Post states:

Federal agents and prosecutors have come to believe former president Donald Trump’s motive for allegedly taking and keeping classified documents was largely his ego and a desire to hold on to the materials as trophies or mementos, according to people familiar with the matter.

As part of the investigation, federal authorities reviewed the classified documents that were recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and private club, looking to see if the types of information contained in them pointed to any kind of pattern or similarities, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

That review has not found any apparent business advantage to the types of classified information in Trump’s possession, these people said. FBI interviews with witnesses so far, they said, also do not point to any nefarious effort by Trump to leverage, sell or use the government secrets. Instead, the former president seemed motivated by a more basic desire not to give up what he believed was his property, these people said.

PJ Media notes:

Not only did the FBI not find any nuclear bomb codes, but they also found no evidence that Trump was looking to “leverage, sell or use the government secrets.”

So Trump wasn’t selling nuclear secrets on Craigslist after all. Who knew? Everyone. And that likely includes the Department of Justice and the FBI.

Needless to say, WaPo couldn’t just admit the “Trump has nuclear secrets for sale” flapdoodle was the latest Hail Mary pass to send Trump to prison and that it proved to be another flaccid member of the “get Trump” orgy. They threw the idea in near the very end that they still might come up with something juicy:

PJ Media concludes:

In other words, the “Trump is selling nuclear secrets” lie is over. He kept a few tchotchkes from his four years serving as the greatest president in recent history. The nerve!

Please forward this article to your liberal sister harpy-in-law and her blue-haired, trans-pansexual, gelding lady-boyfriend who clung like sad, tragic barnacles to the embarrassing lie that Trump was trying to sell nuclear missiles to the Kaiser — or whatever it is they needed to believe.

Even if this information is shouted from the rooftops, there will be people who will hang on to the lie as if it were true. Trump derangement syndrome is real. The thing people need to understand is that if President Trump is not the candidate in 2024, there will be a new derangement syndrome attached to whomever the Republican candidate is (if he is not part of the uni-party). It really isn’t about Trump. It’s about destroying any threat to the uni-party in Washington.

A Blatant Abuse Of Power

Posted on by

On Wednesday, The Washington Examiner reported that President Trump learned “through court filings” that federal agents seized tax documents and medical records during the Aug. 8 FBI raid on his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago. There is no way the taking of those records had anything to do with the ‘national security’ problem the FBI was claiming as the justification for the raid. Since there will be an appointment of a Special Master to oversee the FBI’s search of the documents, that search is supposedly on hold. However, I am cynical enough to believe that every document taken has already been photographed to be used in a campaign against the President should he decide to run again.

The article reports:

While Justice Department officials are investigating whether Trump violated the Espionage Act and committed obstruction of justice, according to an unsealed warrant for the August raid, Cannon revealed “medical documents, correspondence related to taxes, and accounting information” were part of the materials seized during the raid last month, according to court filings.

Additionally, a source familiar with the matter said the FBI confiscated 40 years of Trump’s medical records, according to Fox News.

Trump’s response comes amid criticisms from his attorney Chris Kise about so-called Justice Department leaks about the investigation in the media, with the most recent example being a Washington Post report that noted the FBI seized documents that included material containing a description of an unnamed foreign government’s nuclear capabilities.

“Unfortunately, even after the Court noted specifically in its Order that President Trump ‘faces an unquantifiable potential harm by way of improper disclosure of sensitive information to the public’ and asked counsel for the United States directly about leaks, those leaks continue with no respect for the process nor any regard for the real truth,” the attorney told Fox News.

Democratic lawmakers in Congress have long sought Trump’s tax records since at least 2019. Last month, a federal appeals court approved the House Ways and Means Committee’s request to obtain Trump’s tax returns from the IRS. Trump appealed to the full bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Aug. 18.

This is a total abuse of power by the Biden administration. Every DOJ and FBI person involved should resign in protest of what was done. Unfortunately, there are too many people employed by those agencies who support the abuse of power exhibited in the raid.

President Biden Was Not An Innocent Bystander

Posted on by

On Monday, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article that included screenshots of documents showing that President Biden was not only aware of the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, he had a hand in the raid.

The article reports:

Page #2 and Page #3 of Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling cites a quote from the DOJ own legal filing, dated May 10th, that Joe Biden ordered the National Archives and Records Administration to provide access to the FBI to review the Trump records.  Note the quotation marks:

On May 10, 2022, NARA informed Plaintiff that it would proceed with “provid[ing] the FBI access to the records in question, as requested by the incumbent President, beginning as early as Thursday, May 12, 2022.”  [citation]

The Federal Judge hearing the case concerning the appointment of a Special Master to oversee the handling of the documents seized in the Mar-a-Lago raid cited this information in her decision to move forward with the appointment of a Special Master.

This truly is something that belongs in a banana republic.

 

Some Level Of Fairness

Posted on by

On Saturday, Red State reported that a federal judge has granted President Trump’s request and has issued her preliminary order intending to appoint a special master that Trump sought to review the documents seized in the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago.

The article points out that some on the left are upset about this ruling:

You know you are over the target when the left-wing legal “experts” on the bird site start frothing at the mouth. Someone should ask them what they are so afraid of. How is transparency and accountability in this process a bad thing? Given the disputes over the records, it only makes sense that a hopefully neutral third party would be allowed to arbitrate between the two sides. The NARA is not all-powerful. It does not lord over the executive branch, and just because they say something doesn’t make it true or the law.

The article concludes:

No one can be certain where this goes from here, but my suspicion is that this was more about generating bad headlines for Trump than actually building a criminal case against him. I actually came to that conclusion very early on following AG Merrick Garland’s presser on the matter. I just don’t see the DOJ ignoring the Hillary Clinton precedent regarding the handling of government records, and even if they tried to go that route, there are people on record saying the declassification order existed. It would lead to total chaos if Trump were charged (and presumably convicted given the DC jury pool) with a crime that the government gave Clinton a pass on, and she didn’t have the use of presidential powers as a defense.

Still, another part of me feels like they have to go all the way here. If the DOJ stops short, it only further exposes the raid for what it so obviously was. The administration has painted itself into a corner, and that may bring about some more bad decision-making before this is all said and done.

Stay tuned. I personally think the FBI and DOJ got out over their skis on this, but there is still a danger here that constitutional rights will be overlooked and bad things will happen. Remember, the January 6th prisoners are still in jail.

 

A ‘Get Out The Popcorn’ Moment

Posted on by

On Wednesday, The Epoch Times reported the following:

Tea Party Patriots Action filed a federal complaint against the judge who approved the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida home.

“Judge [Bruce] Reinhart has a conflict of interest and a pattern and history of hostility to President Trump,” said the filing (pdf).

The lawsuit then listed several examples including purported Facebook posts that show Reinhart had criticized Trump while praising the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.). Reinhart also reportedly donated to former President Barack Obama and to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush when he was running against Trump in 2015, the lawsuit said, citing publicly available reports.

The article concludes:

The Tea Party lawsuit also cited a case involving Hillary Clinton in which Reinhart had recused himself, arguing that he should have done so with the FBI search warrant.

“The entire episode of the unprecedented search of the former president’s home, authorized by a political appointee of President Trump’s successor, and approved by a federal magistrate who has been outspoken in his opposition to and loathing of President Trump threatens the principle of ‘equal justice under law’ and the confidence of the American people in an unbiased judiciary,” the complaint said.

The Epoch Times has contacted the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida and Reinhart for comment.

The raid on a former President’s home was unprecedented. If we as Americans sit quietly by and allow abuses of government power such as this to continue unabated, we can expect that those abuses will eventually be aimed at us. This raid should have been a wake-up call to all Americans. I hope it was.

Creating A Police State

Posted on by

John Solomon at Just the News is one of the few investigative reporters left. On Tuesday he posted an article about the decisions that led up to the raid on Mar-a-Lago. One of the things he reports on was the role that the Biden White House played in the raid.

The article reports:

Long before it professed no prior knowledge of the raid on Donald Trump’s estate, the Biden White House worked directly with the Justice Department and National Archives to instigate the criminal probe into alleged mishandling of documents, allowing the FBI to review evidence retrieved from Mar-a-Lago this spring and eliminating the 45th president’s claims to executive privilege, according to contemporaneous government documents reviewed by Just the News.

The memos show then-White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su was engaged in conversations with the FBI, DOJ and National Archives as early as April, shortly after 15 boxes of classified and other materials were voluntarily returned to the federal historical agency from Trump’s Florida home.

By May, Su conveyed to the Archives that President Joe Biden would not object to waiving his predecessor’s claims to executive privilege, a decision that opened the door for DOJ to get a grand jury to issue a subpoena compelling Trump to turn over any remaining materials he possessed from his presidency.

The article contains information about the decision to waive executive privilege in the case of President Trump. I still believe this is about the deep state’s concern that President Trump has documents that will incriminate the FBI and DOJ in the Russia probe.

The article includes some comments by Alan Dershowitz, the famed Harvard law professor emeritus and lifelong Democrat, about the waiving of executive privilege:

“I was very surprised,” Dershowitz said after reading the text of Wall’s letter. “The current president should not be able to waive the executive privilege of a predecessor, without the consent of the former president. Otherwise, [privilege] means nothing. What president will ever discuss anything in private if he knows the man who beat him can and will disclose it.”

While some courts have upheld the notion of a successor president waiving privilege for a predecessor, Dershowitz said the matter remains to be decided definitively by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. The evidence is there that the Biden White House used the Department of Justice and the FBI as political weapons. The question is, “Is there anyone in Congress with the integrity to do anything about it?”

Protecting The Civil Rights Of All Americans

Posted on by

One of the main problems with the deep state that has entrenched itself in Washington, D.C., is that very few people have the resources to fight it. Right now it appears that President Trump is the only person bothering to fight back.

On Monday, The Western Journal posted an article about President Trump’s reaction to the raid on Mar-a-Lago.

The article reports:

Former President Donald Trump announced a lawsuit Monday seeking an audit and return of the items taken from his Mar-a-Lago home in an FBI raid earlier this month.

“We have just filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida strongly asserting my rights, including under the Fourth Amendment of our Constitution, regarding the unnecessary, unwarranted, and unAmerican Break-In by dozens of FBI agents, and others, of my home, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida,” Trump wrote in a statement.

He specifically singled out alleged requests from FBI agents to turn off security cameras during the raid.

“They demanded that the security cameras be turned off, a request we rightfully denied,” Trump wrote. “They prevented my attorneys from observing what was being taken in the raid, saying ‘absolutely not.’ They took documents covered by attorney-client and executive privilege, which is not allowed. They took my passports. They even brought a ‘safe cracker’ and successfully broke into my personal safe, which revealed…nothing!

“We are now demanding that the Department of ‘Justice’ be instructed to immediately STOP the review of documents illegally seized from my home. ALL documents have been previously declassified.”

The article concludes:

In conclusion, Trump called the FBI raid “illegal and unconstitutional.” He said he wanted the FBI to return the documents taken from his home “so that I can give them to the National Archives until they are required for the future Donald J. Trump Presidential Library and Museum.”

“I will never stop fighting for the American people, our Country and the Rule of Law,” Trump wrote. “Make America Great Again!”

I believe (and have believed for a while) that the FBI and the DOJ are searching for whatever documents President Trump has related to the Russia hoax. Those documents at the very least cast the FBI and the DOJ in a very bad light–showing partisanship and a willingness to conduct a politically-based investigation into something they knew was false. If President Trump releases those documents and the information gets to the American people, that action will have a tremendous impact on how people view the FBI and the DOJ and possibly on how people view President Trump.

Will We Ever Get The Blindfold Back On Lady Justice?

Posted on by

On Monday, Just the News posted an article with the following headline, “Biden White House facilitated DOJ’s criminal probe against Trump, scuttled privilege claims: memos.:

The article reports:

“I have therefore decided not to honor the former President’s ‘protective’ claim of privilege,” acting National Archivist Debra Steidel Wall wrote Trump’s team in May.

Long before it professed no prior knowledge of the raid on Donald Trump’s estate, the Biden White House worked directly with the Justice Department and National Archives to instigate the criminal probe into alleged mishandling of documents, allowing the FBI to review evidence retrieved from Mar-a-Lago this spring and eliminating the 45th president’s claims to executive privilege, according to contemporaneous government documents reviewed by Just the News.

Where was the FBI when it came to dealing with the illegal server and email account Hillary Clinton was using? Hillary Clinton was not President and did not have the authority to declassify documents. President Trump did have that authority at the time the documents were removed from the White House.

The article notes:

The memos show then-White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su was engaged in conversations with the FBI, DOJ and National Archives as early as April, shortly after 15 boxes of classified and other materials were voluntarily returned to the federal historical agency from Trump’s Florida home.

By May, Su conveyed to the Archives that President Joe Biden would not object to waiving his predecessor’s claims to executive privilege, a decision that opened the door for DOJ to get a grand jury to issue a subpoena compelling Trump to turn over any remaining materials he possessed from his presidency.

The machinations are summarized in several memos and emails exchanged between the various agencies in spring 2022, months before the FBI took the added unprecedented step of raiding Trump’s Florida compound with a court-issued search warrant.

The most complete summary was contained in a lengthy letter dated May 10 that acting National Archivist Debra Steidel Wall sent Trump’s lawyers summarizing the White House’s involvement.

The article reports:

“We have requested the ability to review the documents,” Corcoran wrote National Archives General Counsel Gary Stern on April 29, copying Su on the letter. “That review is necessary in order to ascertain whether any specific document is subject to privilege. We would respectfully request that you restrict access to the documents until we have had the opportunity to review the documents and to consult with President Donald J. Trump so that he may personally make any decision to assert a claim of constitutionally based privilege.”

But a dozen days later, Wall informed Corcoran that she had the blessing of Biden to overrule those privilege claims and share all materials requested by the DOJ and FBI.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. This is a breathtaking abuse of power on the part of the Biden administration.

Reining In The FBI

Posted on by

This is a post by a guest author, R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D.

Authoritarian governments that limit people’s freedom all have police forces that ensure the compliance of their citizens and keep them in power.  The Romans had the Pretorian Guard, the Nazi’s the Gestapo, and the Soviet Union the KGB.  Alarmingly, it is increasingly apparent that the FBI has morphed into an enforcement arm of the Democrat party/Biden administration.   The Founding Fathers, wisely, did not authorized a federal law enforcement agency in the Constitution.   Let’s examine how we got in this situation and what we can do to reverse it.

        The FBI was originally established in 1908 as a small group (30) of special “investigators” to assist the Department of Justice in prosecuting federal crimes that involved crossing state lines.  As all government agencies do, the bureau not only grew in size but greatly expanded their authority and redefined their role over the years.   By the early 1920’s they began gathering and keeping information on private citizens who were not actually charged with crimes other than their political ideology was unacceptable to the government.   The FBI’s most renowned director J. Edgar Hoover, began keeping information that eventually reached over 450,000 files on people suspected of communist leanings.  A good proportion of these people were deported if they were not citizens.  Few were ever actually charged or given the opportunity to defend themselves in court.  In the 1950s the FBI began gathering similar files on homosexuals in the government and later even non-government employees.  In the 1960s the focus was on civil rights sympathizers and leaders such as the Reverend  M.L.King.   Politicians feared what might be in the FBI files on them.  In the course of gathering this illicit information, the FBI frequently used illegal wire-tapping and abused their subpoena and search authority.   Recently, they issued a subpoena to the newspaper USA Today requiring them to turn over a list of all people who logged in to read a specific article on their website.   

There are many other recent example of the weaponization of the FBI especially as related to President Donald Trump and his associates including the impeachment hoaxes, charging General Flynn, and most recently the totally unjustified and unprecedented  raid on Mar-a Lago.    One of the worst instances was when the FBI in order to protect the identity of one of their informers, allowed false witness testimony at a trial that resulted in four men receiving life sentences.  Two served over 30 years and two died in prison.  A court eventually awarded the victims/families over $100 million in damages.  Still trust the FBI?

So what do we do about it?   Here are my recommendations: (1) Repeal the Patriot Act that greatly expanded the authority of the FBI; (2) Terminate the law enforcement authority of the FBI.  All subpoenas, warrants, searches should be handled by the local Sheriff’s departments.   Sheriffs are the only elected law enforcement officials and therefore accountable directly for their actions to the people. (3)  An elected state official or panel should be given the authority to monitor all FBI activities in their state and report to the state legislature.  (4) It should no longer be a crime to “lie” to the FBI.  This has been abused to entrap people and is a violation of the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. 

There may be other effective actions, but this would be a good start.

Interesting, But Don’t Expect Anything Earthshaking

Posted on by

On Thursday, Just the News reported that U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart has given he Justice Department one week to deliver a redacted copy of the affidavit used to justify the FBI’s unprecedented search of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

The article reports:

U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart also said at the hearing on that matter that he will decide after the department has completed its redactions whether he wants to make his own.

Reinhart, who approved the warrant for the FBI’s raid last week, also said that if the media or the government object to his proposed redactions, they can file an appeal and that the affidavit will remain sealed during any appeals.

The government argued that unsealing the affidavit would “provide a roadmap” of the ongoing investigation. Prosecutor Jay Bratt said the country is in a “volatile” state and releasing the names of those involved in the probe may “chill” other witnesses. 

“This is not a precedent we want to set,” he said.

Reinhart at the hearing also unsealed more minor documents containing general information, according to NPR.

The Justice Department also argued that redacting the affidavit would leave no substantive information to release and pointed out the search and release of the warrant last week had already resulted in death threats against FBI agents.

I admit that this sounds as if some people might actually be held accountable for using the FBI and Department of Justice for political purposes. However, don’t get your hopes up. We believed in Mueller (for a while), we believed in Barr (for a while), and we believed in Durham (for a while). The deep state has many ways of protecting itself, and there is no reason to believe that protection is weakened. I suspect that when we see the affideavit it will have many redactions (or at least enough to hide what actually happened).

We Have Reached Peak Insanity

Posted on by

On Tuesday, The Daily Caller reported that U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart will hold a hearing regarding the unsealing of the search warrant affidavit. Is it appropriate for the Magistrate who issued the search warrant to determine whether or not anyone can see the affidavit related to it? Are we supposed to overlook the fact that this Magistrate is loosely connected to Jeffrey Epstein? Those are just two of the questions I have about this case.

The article reports:

Reinhart will hold the hearing on Aug. 18 in the West Palm Beach Division, according to Fox News. The judge will opine whether the Department of Justice (DOJ) must unseal the search warrant materials for the raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, which likely include the search warrant affidavit. The DOJ is expected to argue to keep the document sealed, the New York Post reported.

…The DOJ adamantly opposes the release of the search warrant affidavit, which would include testimony from federal agents justifying the raid and information about witnesses. Assistant U.S. Attorney Juan Antonio Gonzalez argued making the affidavit public would risk “the integrity of an ongoing law enforcement investigation that implicates national security.”

Somehow I just don’t believe them.

The article concludes:

Attorney General Merrick Garland, who personally approved the raid, said at a press conference recently that FBI agents could be subject to increased threats as a result of the search.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers has requested the DOJ provide updates detailing the process of the search, which documents the FBI found, and how their release would impact national security.

Reinhart signed off on the search warrant that allowed the FBI to raid Mar-a-Lago. Reinhart, however, has ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, the Miami Herald reported. Reinhart quit his job as a U.S. attorney in 2008 and went to work for Epstein, according to the report. Reinhart was in private practice for 10 years before becoming a federal magistrate in 2018.

I heard a comment on the radio today that said generally the people pushing for transparency are the good guys. I suspect that is true in this case.

Where Is The Transparency?

Posted on by

On Monday, The Hill reported the following:

The Justice Department on Monday told a federal judge that releasing the law enforcement affidavit used to obtain a search warrant for former President Trump’s home would jeopardize an ongoing investigation.

Federal prosecutors submitted a court filing opposing any efforts to unseal the document laying out probable cause for the search. The filing came just days after they agreed to release a copy of the warrant itself as well as a receipt listing the materials that were seized during the search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

“The affidavit supporting the search warrant presents a very different set of considerations,” the filing reads. “There remain compelling reasons, including to protect the integrity of an ongoing law enforcement investigation that implicates national security, that support keeping the affidavit sealed.”

Prosecutors typically submit affidavits from law enforcement officials when seeking a judge’s authorization for a search warrant. These documents are meant to provide an overview of evidence collected during an investigation that would support the probable cause needed to obtain a warrant under the Fourth Amendment.

The court filing submitted Monday — which was signed by Jay Bratt, the head of the DOJ’s counterintelligence office, and Juan Antonio Gonzalez, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida — argued that disclosing the affidavit used to secure the Mar-a-Lago warrant would cause “significant and irreparable damage to this ongoing criminal investigation.”

I hate to be cynical (but I am getting good at it), but I translated that as ‘give us more time–we are trying to invent some evidence.’ The term ‘ongoing investigation’ is always used when the Justice Department is avoiding transparency.

The article notes:

They argued that revealing sensitive information about the investigation could also affect law enforcement’s ability to secure cooperation from potential witnesses and risk revealing identifying details about any witnesses who are already working with investigators.

This is not the Justice Department of a free country.

Refusing An Impartial Observer?

Posted on by

On Monday, NewsMax reported that former President Trump’s attorneys requested an independent special master to review records that were seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate.

The article quotes one of the former President’s attorneys, Alina Habba:

“In these types of situations what happens is the attorney handling it will ask that there be an independent special master, which is an attorney that gets appointed to oversee and to make sure everything is done correctly,” Habba said on Newsmax’s “Wake Up America,” explaining that the master would be independent of both Trump’s side and that of the DOJ.”

“It’s a neutral party,” Habba said. “Think of it much like a mediator. They just make sure that the t’s are being crossed, the i’s are being dotted, and there’s no funny business.”

A decision will be made soon, she added, but “optically, it’s a good idea,” said Habba. “I think that you need to look impartial, especially given the negative impact that this has had on the country right now. I would try and look as open to having as much transparency as possible.”

…”Just understand, he was cooperating,” said Habba. “They had been on-premises prior. He had had a subpoena that they coordinated an effort with his team to come in. They told us to lock it up. They locked it up. So why? Why did you need after two months to have this insane raid?”

I believe the FBI had two goals in this raid. The first was to make sure President Trump did not have documents proving the FBI role in RussiaGate. Evidently there are documents that show the FBI continued the investigation after knowing that there was no basis for it. The FBI wanted to put on a political show to end President Trump’s presidency. If former President Trump has those documents and chooses at some time in the future to reveal them, the FBI would lose a lot of credibility. The other reason is to find some way to prevent former President Trump from running for office again. The Democrats are not sure they can cheat enough to beat him again.

Meanwhile, America is easing gently toward become a place where the party in power in Washington can use the FBI and the Department of Justice to target their political enemies. That is not a good thing.

From The Babylon Bee

Posted on by

Since The Babylon Bee has been blocked on some social media, I would like to do everyone a favor by sharing one of its best posts.

The headline:

‘The FBI Raid On Melania’s Closet Was Justified,’ Says Merrick Garland Wearing Gorgeous New Evening Gown And Sun Hat

The picture:

Highlights from the article:

“We wouldn’t raid Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate or Melania’s wardrobe unless it was absolutely, 100% necessary,” said Garland. “I resent any accusation that this raid was influenced by partisan politics or my insatiable desire to wear pretty designer dresses.” The Attorney General then did a little spin in his purple gown as the press gasped with delight.

FBI Director Christopher Wray echoed the statement as he strode up to the Hoover Building in a dazzling pair of diamond-encrusted Alexander McQueen stilettos. “The men and women of the FBI are paragons of unassailable integrity and impartiality, and any suggestion otherwise is murderous treason,” he said. Several news outlets present also noted the delicious smell of Chanel No.5 in the air.

At publishing time, Trump took to Truth Social to announce that all his golf clubs were also missing.

This is great satire, but it isn’t really funny. If the Washington establishment can so easily violate the civil rights of a former President who has more lawyers than you can shake a stick at, what can they do to an ordinary citizen? If you have doubts, look at the January 6th prisoners who have been denied most of their civil rights–the right to a speedy trial, the right to confront their accusers, the right to protest (many of those in jail did not even enter the Capitol) etc.

If we do not vote for people who will not be part of the swamp, no one will be happy with the condition of our country.

This Needs To Be Mentioned Often

Posted on by

On May 5th, Breitbart posted the following headline:

Documents at Mar-a-Lago Marked ‘Classified’ Were Already Declassified, Kash Patel Says

The President has the unencumbered authority to declassify documents. They cannot be reclassified after he has declassified them. President Trump was still in office while the boxes were packed and sent to Mar-a-Lago. It should be noted that there is very little chance that he packed the boxes.

Meanwhile there was no raid similar to the one at Mar-a-Lago to get Hillary Clinton’s secret server.

On August 12, The Western Journal reported:

Speaking with Breitbart News on Wednesday, Kash Patel, a former Department of Defense official under Trump, claimed that the former president had taken a slew of declassified documents with him upon leaving the White House.

“Trump declassified whole sets of materials in anticipation of leaving government that he thought the American public should have the right to read themselves,” Patel said.

However, since the White House counsel “failed to generate the paperwork to change the classification markings,” those documents could still appear to be classified, according to Patel.

The article also contains the full search warrant and the inventory of what was taken from Mar-a-Lago.

If you are one of the people celebrating the fact that President Trump has been treated in this manner, you might want to stop and think for a minute. Is this actually equal justice under the law? If the Justice Department can focus so totally on convicting one individual (show me the person, and I will show you the crime), what does that say about America’s future? We have seen the civil rights of people who were only guilty of trespassing on January 6th totally violated. Now we are seeing the civil rights of a former president violated. Meanwhile, there is public evidence of the son of the current President engaging in all sorts of illegal activity and his crimes are totally ignored.

We are not in a good place.

In Case You Hadn’t Noticed The Double Standard

Posted on by

On Tuesday, The Daily Caller posted an article about the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago (yes, it was a raid). The article points out the contrast in the justification for the raid and historical precedent.

The article notes:

Unless scores of witnesses saw Donald Trump stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone, the FBI’s raid of his Mar-a-Lago home represents an unforgivable politicization of our justice system. The proof rests in the peaceful, undisturbed abodes of Hillary Clinton, Hunter Biden, Jim Biden, James Comey, Stefan Halper, Rodney Joffe and every other partisan the FBI investigated without violating the sanctuary of their homes.

…The FBI that raided the former president’s personal residence never sought a warrant to search Clinton’s homes after The New York Times reported on March 3, 2016, that, while secretary of State, she had used a private server. Weeks later Clinton, while plotting her upcoming run for president, wiped her entire server clean using “a sophisticated software program, BleachBit, which eventually made it extraordinarily difficult for the FBI to recover her emails, several thousand of which were successfully destroyed.”

Among the emails deleted were some 30 connected to the Benghazi murders that Clinton never supplied to the State Department upon leaving office — a fairly analogous, albeit more appalling scenario to the theory floated that agents raided Trump’s house on Monday to seize supposedly classified documents.

Agents also didn’t raid Clinton’s homes to recover the 13 mobile devices that the FBI believed the former secretary of State may have used to email her staff. Instead, the DOJ asked Clinton’s attorneys to provide agents the Blackberries and other devices. Less than two weeks later, her lawyers claimed “they were unable to locate any of these devices,” leaving the FBI “unable to acquire or forensically examine any of these 13 mobile devices.”

The article concludes:

Former Department of Justice attorney, Jeff Clark, another Trump loyalist, also saw his home raided by the FBI.

Against this two-pronged approach to justice, Americans need not lean conservative or support Trump to spot the scandal. And Americans need not care about politics to oppose the politicization of the DOJ and FBI: They just need to care about the future of the country — one that cannot survive long if such corruption and cronyism continues.

We need to remember that the President is the person who determines the classification of documents. He has that authority. There is speculation (which I believe will prove true) that the documents the FBI was after were the declassified documents relating to the FBI’s role in the Russiagate scandal. There are a number of powerful people who want those documents destroyed. Although they are declassified, they have not been released. Judicial Watch is suing the Justice Department to obtain them. Stay tuned.

Quote Of The Week

Posted on by

The FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago was a disgrace, but I wonder if the Biden administration (yes, I think they all knew it was going to happen) thought about how the raid would play around the world.

Breitbart reported the following on Tuesday:

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele criticized the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) raid on former U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal residence at Mar-A-Lago on Monday in a statement posted by Bukele’s official Twitter account, the Spanish news agency Agencia EFE reported.

This is the tweet:

I think that is a very good question.

The article at Breitbart reports:

Bukele’s administration (2019-present) maintained friendly diplomatic relations with that of Trump during his presidency (2017-2021), Agencia EFE recalled on Monday, writing:

The Government of President Bukele was close to the Administration of former President Trump and the Salvadoran president maintained a close relationship with his ambassador -at the time- in Salvadoran territory, Ronald Johnson.

However, El Salvador’s relationship with the United States changed with the arrival of President Joe Biden and is currently tense due to some decisions made by Bukele that have been criticized by the Biden Administration.

The article concludes:

The U.S. State Department released a list on May 17, 2021, that labeled 17 Central American politicians, including current and former members of Bukele’s administration, as “corrupt.” The action seemingly prompted El Salvador’s congress to ratify a 2019 cooperation agreement with China — one of Washington’s top foes — the next day. El Salvador’s Congress ratified an economic cooperation agreement with Beijing on May 18, 2021, that was originally signed in 2019. The deal called for China’s government to invest $62 million in various infrastructure projects across El Salvador, including a water purification plant.

Bukele and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro both issued public statements in support of U.S. podcaster Joe Rogan on February 2. The two leaders expressed hope that Rogan would continue fighting for “freedom of the press” and “freedom of speech,” respectively, in America amid increased scrutiny of his podcasts from establishment media outlets.

And those are only some of the diplomatic accomplishments of the Biden administration.

Some Legal Perspective

Posted on by

I am not a lawyer (and have no intentions of ever becoming one), but have some very smart friends. This article will be information from smart friends and various other sources.

From Robert DuChemin (who is a lawyer) on Facebook:

The big news is the FBI’s illegal raid on Donald Trump’s home. The FBI broke the law in several ways. First, in order to execute a search warrant on documents that may be in a safe, police can only secure the safe. They exceeded their legal authority when they broke into the safe.
Secondly, the warrant only gave the FBI the authority to seize top-secret documents. They made no cursory review while at the President’s home, however, and therefore clearly retrieved documents that were outside of the scope of the subpoena. That was an invasion of the President’s rights and creates a constitutional crisis.
Third, The president has the ultimate authority on what is declassified and what needs to be sent to the US archives. He has no obligation to notify anybody of his decision. Therefore, when he packed the boxes and was still president he clearly indicated that what was going into the boxes was not something he considered sending to the archives. It was his decision alone. Nobody else has the constitutional authority to overrule him. Not even congress.
The bureaucrats are not in charge. In the USA, as in any uncorrupt republic, the elected officials are in charge.
This is a usurpation of power just like in the Obama administration, when the FBI helped the very corrupt Hillary Clinton try to steal that election.

Why bother hiding your cards when the media won’t challenge you?

Democrat lawyer Marc Elias knows what’s up. He shows us why the Democrats raided Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago.

Because this would never apply to anyone else, right? Looking at you, Hillary.

18 U.S. Code § 2071 – Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally:

(b)Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term “office” does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States.

I don’t know if we can get the blindfold back on Lady Justice.