FBI Executed a Warrant at Mar a Lago; the Investigation Continues

Im no ethical or legal expert, but here’s my thinking:

1) I take ajoseph’s point. I do think the DOJ will be (and should be!) more careful with Trump than an average person.
2) That said, more careful isn’t the same as ignoring strong evidence of a crime. The DOJ’s behavior during this whole suggests to me they have every intention of indicting. This is what I now expect.

 

I found it notable that even Alan Dershowitz is saying there is "technically" probably enough evidence to indict Trump. But he says he doesn't think any reasonable prosecutor would do it because (1) there is not bi-partisan support for it; and (2) because Hillary was not indicted. Putting aside those "tests," it's interesting to me that he seems to concede the sufficiency of the evidence and is really just making what I gather is a selective prosecution argument.

 

And a fairly ridiculous one. The standard set by the Clinton investigation (and it was set prior to that in a variety of investigations) is that intent matters for civilians. If they are just reckless, they don't prosecute. If they intended to do something with the documents that they knew they couldn't do, then they prosecute. Hard to argue there was no intent when the Archives visited him twice, asking for the documents, and he was shifting the documents around the building to hide them from the Archives people. Whether he had initial intent, once he did that, he clearly had now formed the intent to do something he wasn't allowed to do.

 

I absolutely agree the lawyers are in the doo-doo zone.

 

Trump was given wide latitude on the Comey investigation because we didn’t want to upset anyone when he could have been prosecuted.
He was given wide latitude on Jan 6 by his party when he should have been impeached.
And now people want to give him wide latitude again because of fear of reprisal.
At some point, we went past the 90 degrees latitude available to be given.

 

Did his lawyers have an obligation to go through the files themselves? Would they have even had sufficient security clearance for that? Or did they simply assert what Trump authorized them to say?

 

Yep, I’m betting they relied on the word of their client which just makes them idiots. However, I think it was Babb that stated “after a diligent search” so either it wasn’t quite diligent, or she didn’t search.

 

I am also speculating that they did not actually have access to look through everything and thought that they pressed it they would be rejected, and that they spent too much time they wouldn't get paid

 

I firmly believe that Garland would not have allowed the search at all, without fully considering what his course of action would be if the FBI found sufficient evidence. I do think that he's LOL at Trump's subsequent actions completely assuring the DoJ case is airtight.

 

Bradley Moss interview. He's an expert on national security law and also very conversant in these facts and he very succinctly and persuasively distinguishes the undisputed facts here from all prior prosecutions or non prosecutions from mishandling of classified material and why this is different and more egregious.

Trump and the Espionage Act (with Bradley Moss) - Skullduggery

 

Trump may have been the most investigated President the US has ever had, and you're saying he was given wide latitude? Come on.

He "could have been prosecuted" for the Comey investigation. I think it is much more likely such a prosecution wouldn't be successful, which is why they didn't pursue it. Democrats have not been giving Trump a free pass since 2016. On the contrary, they have been calling him an illegitimate President and trying to get him removed since the day he took office.

You're upset that he wasn't impeached (a political process) 14 days before leaving office (which he peacefully gave to Joe Biden).

There's a fine line between "the laws apply to everyone" and "we're going to make a show over a speeding ticket to our political opponents because we don't like them." Obviously the former is justified, the latter is not. Jury's out on where this is.

 

113 were classified (not potentially classified), 3 of those contained classification markers. There also could have been more because she had 30,000 "personal" emails deleted.

She had 30,000 emails deleted and lied that any emails were classified.

Again, Hillary Clinton deleted 30,000 "personal" emails. Despite this, they still found 113 classified emails, 3 of which were marked as such. So no, she didn't "hand over everything she had." That would be like saying Trump burned half of his place in MAL, then gave the FBI what's left, then calling it cooperation because HE claims what he burned was "personal." If Trump declassified those documents before he left office, which involves no formal process, he's fine. Hillary Clinton had no authority to declassify. This doesn't really change the law, but it's also worth noting that even if the documents were classified, they're probably less likely to be compromised at MAL than a private email server.

 

I'd love for Trump to go away and shut up. The Republican Party will be better for it.

 

These will be the points for the lawyer to explain. I don’t think the lawyers will be given the benefit of the doubt here.

 

Have you considered the he might just be the most worthy of being so investigated?

 

It's true that Democrats don't like Trump. But a lot of people who have been investigating him or speaking out against him over the years have been Republicans (and people that Trump himself hired or retained). That makes it harder to dismiss as purely partisan witch hunts.

 

I’m starting to think the only qualified person Trump ever hired was Stormy Daniels.

 

Looks a little big to be a backup hard drive (even one one those “desktop” sized ones), but I’ll be damned if I know what it is. Can’t rule out hard drive, could be some other device.

Is he being investigated because Democrats are mean people out to get him, or is it because he just can’t stop criming?

Seems to me it’s 100% the latter, I was already convinced of that with his Ukraine shenanigans, now it’s just getting pathological. Is this top secret documents fiasco even debatable? Dude had his crazed crowds chanting “lock her up” for years over far less than what he was caught with here, AND he showed intent by moving the docs and not handing them back, AND he compounded it all by lying after he was caught.