Thread: Legal Charges Against Trump

Learned something new today.

The PRA is the Presidential Records Act, passed by Congress in the aftermath of Richard Nixon’s failed attempt to take presidential documents with him out of the White House after Watergate.

• Five takeaways from the Mar-a-Lago search affidavit

Agents believed Mar-a-Lago housed more classified documents, evidence of ‘obstruction’

Extensive redactions leave DOJ’s ‘probable cause’ basis largely unknown

Trump mischaracterized level of cooperation with federal officials

The affidavit offers new details on classified records previously recovered from Trump

Why Trump held on to classified materials a mystery

____________

• The stain.

Soon to be amongst the ranks of other third world countries

Former leaders have been jailed or charged all over the world

I was just reading the affidavit and there's this part:

18 USC 2071 (bottom of page 5 on to page 6)

a. Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

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.

There's several ways to skin a cat it seems.

Originally Posted by Topper

Why Trump held on to classified materials a mystery

Indeed.

My guess, it is in his personality. He thought he can, the law does not apply to him.

Originally Posted by Takeovers

Indeed.

My guess, it is in his personality. He thought he can, the law does not apply to him.

It has been suggested that he stole those documents and insists they're his because there is evidence of a crime in there somewhere.

Originally Posted by Topper

I was just reading the affidavit and there's this part:

18 USC 2071 (bottom of page 5 on to page 6)

a. Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

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.

There's several ways to skin a cat it seems.

I’m still looking for a sedition charge, but concealing, destruction or alteration of records in Federal investigations would suit me fine.

I don’t think there’s much doubt that this fat loser is going to jail

AFFIDAVIT: ‘OBSTRUCTION’ EVIDENCE SUSPECTED — SPY DOCS AT MAR-A-LAGO

• Mar-A-Lago Search Affidavit: Trump Was Insecurely Storing Most Sensitive Intel At Club

The sworn affidavit that prosecutors used to persuade a federal judge to let them search Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home earlier this month says that classified documents would likely be found there as well as “evidence of obstruction,” according to a redacted version released Friday.

“There is probable cause to believe that additional documents that contain classified NDI or that are Presidential records subject to record retention requirements currently remain at the PREMISES. There is also probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found at the PREMISES,” the heavily redacted, 38-page affidavit reads.

NDI refers to National Defense Information ― a category of documents considered highly sensitive.

The Department of Justice’s proposed redactions, and reasons for those redactions, were also released.

The affidavit, filed by an FBI agent from the Washington, D.C., office with training in “counterintelligence and espionage investigations,” says that the agency was brought in to investigate by the National Archives after officials there found that 15 boxes retrieved from Mar-a-Lago earlier this year included highly classified material.

“Of most significant concern was that highly classified records were unfoldered, intermixed with other records, and otherwise unproperly [sic] identified,” the FBI agent wrote.

The FBI did a preliminary review of the material in those boxes and found documents with classification markings in 14 out of the 15, the special agent wrote, describing the documents using a string of acronyms referring to classified material and “FPOTUS” for former President Trump:

“A preliminary triage of the documents with classification markings revealed the following approximate numbers: 184 unique documents bearing classification markings, including 67 documents marked as CONFIDENTIAL, 92 documents marked as SECRET, and 25 documents marked as TOP SECRET. Further, the FBI agents observed markings reflecting the following compartments/dissemination controls: HCS, FISA, ORCON, NOFORN, and SI. Based on my training and experience, I know that documents classified at these levels typically contain NDI. Several of the documents also contained what appears to be FPOTUS’s handwritten notes.”

The categories include HSC, which refers to “intelligence information derived from clandestine human sources,” and NOFORN, which means that material is not to be released to any foreign governments or nationals.

The agent then quotes from a June 8 letter from the Department of Justice to Trump’s lawyers that said the classified material was not being securely controlled.

“They have not been handled in an appropriate manner or stored in an appropriate location. Accordingly, we ask that the room at Mar-a-Lago where the documents had been stored be secured and that all of the boxes that were moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago (along with any other items in that room) be preserved in that room in their current condition until further notice,” the letter read.

Much of text of the affidavit is entirely blacked out to protect the names of investigators, witnesses and investigative techniques. The entirety of Pages 24 through 28 is just black lines, except for paragraph numbers and a subheading: “There is probable cause to believe that documents containing classified NDI and presidential records remain at the premises.”

DOJ prosecutors filed the redacted affidavit at the federal courthouse in West Palm Beach, Florida, late Friday morning after Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart ruled on Thursday that he had accepted the redactions prosecutors proposed to the affidavit as “narrowly tailored to serve the government’s legitimate interest in the integrity of the ongoing investigation and are the least onerous alternative to sealing the entire affidavit.”

An hour after the release of the affidavit, Trump posted another message on his social media network attacking the FBI, the Justice Department and the judge in the case.

“Affidavit heavily redacted!!! Nothing mentioned on ‘Nuclear,’ a total public relations subterfuge by the FBI & DOJ, or our close working relationship regarding document turnover - WE GAVE THEM MUCH. Judge Bruce Reinhart should NEVER have allowed the Break-In of my home,” he wrote on Truth Social.

The former president has publicly demanded the release of the unredacted affidavit but did not make that request in court.

FBI agents searched Trump’s tennis and social club in Palm Beach on Aug. 8 and took away boxes of material, including 11 packets of classified documents. Among that set was a batch labeled with the highest classification markings, meant for review only in secure government facilities.

Trump, who had already been attacking the FBI and prosecutors for investigating his actions on and leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection has ramped up criticism of law enforcement since then.

His followers have responded by threatening FBI agents and the Department of Justice, and one Trump supporter was killed in a shootout with police after he tried to attack the FBI’s Cincinnati field office.

In addition to the federal criminal investigations, a Georgia prosecutor is separately investigating Trump and his allies’ attempts to coerce state officials into falsely declaring him the winner in that state.

Trump, despite losing the election by 7 million votes nationally and 306-232 in the Electoral College, became the first president in more than two centuries of elections to refuse to hand over power peacefully. His incitement of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol — his last-ditch attempt to remain in office ― killed five, including one police officer, injured another 140 officers and led to four police suicides.

Nevertheless, Trump remains the dominant figure in the Republican Party and is openly speaking about running for the presidency again in 2024.

In statements on his personal social media platform, Trump has continued to lie about the election and the House Jan. 6 committee’s work, calling it a “hoax” similar to previous investigations into his 2016 campaign’s acceptance of Russian assistance and his attempted extortion of Ukraine into helping his 2020 campaign.

Originally Posted by thailazer

Crazy to think those documents may have been totally insecure in contracted moving trucks between the White House and Florida. Anyone could have had at them.

They may not be complete. Somebody also could also have a bunch already.

It should be at least obstruction.

• Trump’s narrative takes big hit with affidavit’s release

One of former President Trump’s main claims about the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago is being undermined by Friday’s release of a key affidavit.

Trump has pushed the narrative that he and his lawyers were cooperating with the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) inquiries about documents from his time in the White House. This, he claims, means that the Aug. 8 raid on his Florida estate was gratuitous.

But the affidavit that persuaded a judge to grant the search warrant tells a different story.

Even in heavily redacted form, the affidavit points out that there was a prolonged process lasting around seven months in 2021 before Trump’s team coughed up any documents at all.

It gives a far less friendly account than Team Trump has done of events in June of this year.

The former president and his allies have, for instance, described an affable visit to Mar-a-Lago by a senior DOJ official, Jay Bratt, and three FBI agents on June 3. According to a Trump legal filing earlier this week, one of the FBI agents, having been shown the storage room in which some documents were held, purportedly said, “Now it all makes sense.”

The same Trump filing refers to a June 8 letter in which the DOJ “requested, in pertinent part, that the storage room be secured” — a request that is implied to have been met when Trump told staff to put a second lock on the door.

By contrast, the DOJ’s affidavit quotes a letter on the same date — presumably the same letter — reiterating to a Trump lawyer that there was no “secure location authorized for the storage of classified information” anywhere at the resort.

The letter makes clear that the DOJ’s request was not some generalized security check-up but a demand for the “preservation” of the storage room in its “current condition until further notice” — phrasing that is far more redolent of an investigation of a possible crime scene than a friendly chat about padlocks.

The filing also includes, as an exhibit, a May 2022 letter from Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran to Bratt, the head of the counterintelligence section of the DOJ’s national security division.

In the letter, Corcoran argues that presidents have “absolute authority to declassify documents” and that, in any event, no president can be prosecuted for “actions involving classified documents.”

Those claims are contentious and, again, strike a different tone than the one Trump and his allies have sought to portray.

Put it all together and the effect on Trump’s preferred narrative of the investigation seems stark.

“It blows it to smithereens,” Harry Litman told this column.

Litman, a former U.S. attorney and deputy assistant attorney general, focused on the various delays by the Trump side as the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and then the DOJ sought missing documents.

The affidavit seeking the search warrant, Litman said, “is at the end of an exasperating, very prolonged dallying by them that would never be put up with from any other citizen.”

The argument that Trump may simply have declassified all the relevant documents also drew the sharpest comment yet from President Biden, who had previously sought to keep his distance from the investigation.

“I’ve declassified everything in the world. I’m president, I can do it all!” Biden sarcastically told reporters at the White House Friday soon after the affidavit became public. “C’mon!”

Meanwhile, a footnote in the affidavit made clear that the classification status of the documents in question would not have a make-or-break bearing on at least one of the possible crimes being investigated.

Trump, characteristically, is pressing on full-bore with his allegations that he is being mistreated for political reasons over the raid.

He argued in a Truth Social post Friday that the judge in the case, Bruce Reinhart, “should NEVER have allowed the Break-In of my home.”

He further alleged that Reinhart bore “animosity and hatred” toward him.

Yet even while deploying his usual combative rhetoric, Trump still insisted that his side had enjoyed “a close working relationship regarding document turnover.”

It’s impossible to square that claim with the FBI’s assertion in the affidavit that investigators had “probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found” in a Mar-a-Lago search.

The bureau’s reasons for this assertion remain mysterious, however, given the extensive redactions to the 32-page affidavit.

In a related document also released on Friday, the DOJ contended that the redactions were necessary because of the imperative to “protect the safety of multiple civilian witnesses” in the burgeoning case.

The department further argued that “the government has well-founded concerns that steps may be taken to frustrate or otherwise interfere with this investigation if facts in the affidavit were prematurely disclosed.”

Still, information that was disclosed brought a new level of granular detail into the public domain.

In particular, it revealed that of the 15 boxes that had been retrieved from Mar-a-Lago roughly one year after Trump left office, 14 contained information that had classified markings.

In total, the affidavit said, there were 184 such documents, 67 of which were marked as confidential, 92 of which were marked as secret and 25 of which were marked as top secret.

Those details alone disconcert experts in the field.

“While we don’t know what that information pertains to, by its very definition it could conceivably threaten individuals’ lives,” said Mark Zaid, an attorney who specializes in national security matters.

Zaid emphasized that it is not yet clear that Trump himself is the target of the criminal investigation, only that investigators believe evidence of a crime could be found at Mar-a-Lago.

Even so, he warned, “I do think, based on the affidavit, that the jeopardy faced by one or more people continues to rise.”

“I don’t know who the one or more people are,” he added. “It could be Mar-a-Lago staff, it could be the president, it could be his lawyers.”

____________

• Trump had been stonewalling the National Archives since May 2021.

Trump turned over 15 boxes of material to the National Archives in January, which he’s used to portray himself as cooperating in the case. But the affidavit kneecaps that defense, noting that the archives had been asking for the material since way back in May 2021.

And as the search earlier this month made abundantly clear, Trump held on to highly sensitive documents even after claiming they’d all been relinquished in January ― and even as his legal representatives formally declared it had been returned.

____________

In other news…..

• DOJ says only a "limited" number of Trump documents may be privileged

Only a "limited set" of the documents seized by the FBI from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home may be protected by attorney-client privilege, the Department of Justice said in a court filing Monday.

Driving the news: The filing comes in response to a lawsuit filed by Trump last week seeking the appointment of a special master to review the materials seized and prevent the FBI from examining the seized documents until the special master is in place.

• A special master, usually a third party like a retired judge, would review the material and determine whether it is protected by attorney-client privilege or other legal doctrines.
• On Saturday federal judge in Florida signaled her willingness to grant the request for a special master and ordered the DOJ to file a public response to Trump's request as well as file, under seal, a more detailed list of the materials seized from Mar-a-Lago and the status of the review of the materials by Tuesday.

State of play: The court filing on Monday acknowledged the judge's order and noted that a more detailed public response, as well as a sealed supplemental filing on the requested list of materials and their status, is forthcoming.

• The DOJ revealed in the court filing that its own privilege review team “identified a limited set of materials that potentially contain attorney-client privileged information” and “completed its review of those materials.”
• It is now following procedures set out in the search affidavit for the handling of privileged material, it added.
• The DOJ is also working with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to conduct a "classification review" of the materials seized in the search, while the ODNI also conducts its own assessment of the natural security risks of the top secret documents obtained.

https://www.axios.com/2022/08/29/don...ited-privilege

Little more: https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile...a-lago-search/

What a fucking bozo!

Why take all the papers with him in the first place . . . it boggles the mind

Originally Posted by panama hat

Why take all the papers with him in the first place . . . it boggles the mind

Money.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Money.

I don't believe that is the main factor. He's got money, whether millions or billions and he can always raise more from the great unwashed and uneducated. I'd think it's more a matter of knowing he was so powerful, his narcissism drives his every thought

Originally Posted by S Landreth

Former President Donald Trump argued in a court filing Wednesday that the National Archives should have expected to find classified material among the 15 boxes Trump turned over in January from Mar-a-Lago because they were presidential records.

That is simply brilliant reasoning. (For a four-year old)

DOJ has so far been fairly sure footed. Every time Trump makes a move - it releases more information that is not good for him.

I do wonder if there is a big cherry coming to top it off. It seems unlikely that he just grabbed documents at random, so I wonder if some of the documents show his involvement with Russia. That espionage charge might be a bit more motivated than it seems at the moment....

Originally Posted by S Landreth

the National Archives should have expected to find classified material among the 15 boxes Trump turned over in January from Mar-a-Lago because they were presidential records.

Which he was not legally entitled to possess.
How has he deceived so many for so long?

Originally Posted by nidhogg

I do wonder if there is a big cherry coming to top it off.

Probably not until after the midterms.

Originally Posted by Topper

Probably not until after the midterms.

The DOJ is still protecting the working investigation that is ongoing. It does make one wonder what the golden ring is in all of this.

^
Christina Bobb

• Trump lawyers could be witnesses — or targets — in DOJ obstruction probe

Christina Bobb and Evan Corcoran, two of former President Donald Trump's lawyers, are facing scrutiny for their interactions with the Justice Department over classified material, and legal experts told The Guardian they could soon be witnesses or targets of the obstruction investigation.

For several months, the government has been working to recover classified material and other records that Trump took from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, his home and club in Florida, with Bobb and Corcoran speaking to officials on behalf of Trump. On Tuesday, the Justice Department submitted a court filing in response to Trump's request for an independent review of the material removed from Mar-a-Lago earlier this month, and wrote in the document that on June 3, Bobb and Corcoran made claims to the DOJ that were false.

The filing states that the Justice Department's chief of counterintelligence, Jay Bratt, and three FBI agents went to Mar-a-Lago to retrieve material that had been subpoenaed. Bobb and Corcoran turned the documents over in an envelope, and Bobb also produced and signed a letter confirming all of the subpoenaed documents were there. Corcoran went on to indicate that the material had been in one storage room, the filing said. However, the Justice Department said it received evidence from several sources showing classified material from the White House remained at Mar-a-Lago, which was proven this month when FBI agents executed a search warrant and found hundreds of classified documents.

The Justice Department said it is "likely" that on June 3, the lawyers were attempting to conceal presidential and classified documents from the government, and it "raises the prospect that both Bobb and Corcoran could become witnesses in the obstruction investigation," The Guardian writes. Legal experts say federal prosecutors must decide whether Bobb and Corcoran deliberately misled the Justice Department, making them targets of the probe, or they gave false information because they were deceived by Trump. Bobb and Corcoran have not commented on the matter.

Trump's lawyers may become witnesses or targets in FBI documents investigation

"If the Justice Department is going to pursue criminal charges, any prosecutor is going to want to have on the record the full picture of what happened, which will require the testimony of all the witnesses with the relevant knowledge — and that certainly includes lawyers here," said Samuel Buell, a Duke University professor of criminal law and former prosecutor.

Any attempt to subpoena the two lawyers for testimony and written communications about their discussions with Trump about the matter would immediately set off a legal fight over attorney-client privilege, legal specialists said.