Classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought in a search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence on Monday, according to people familiar with the investigation.
Experts in classified information said the unusual search underscores deep concern among government officials about the types of information they thought could be located at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and potentially in danger of falling into the wrong hands.
Those desperate to lock up Trump are a menace to the republic.
You know a nation is in trouble when its security services are raiding the residence of a former president. Doubly so when said nation’s supposedly liberal intelligentsia seem tickled pink about this unprecedented development, without a whiff of concern or scepticism about what the feds are up to. That’s where the United States is at the moment, in the wake of the FBI’s search of former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida on Monday, reportedly over a dispute about missing official documents.
President Joe Biden’s Attorney General, Merrick Garland, announced Thursday afternoon that he personally approved the FBI search warrant on the home of former President Donald Trump this week and that the Department has moved to unseal the search warrant.
Showing up more than 30 minutes late, Garland did not answer any questions and gave very little information.
After Mar-a-Lago, the middle ground has been plundered
Thursday 22 May 1856, was a sunny, sleepy day in Washington, D.C. As Preston Brooks, the Democratic Representative from South Carolina’s Fourth District, strolled into the Senate chamber, the air felt hot and heavy. The Senate’s business had wound down; the galleries had almost emptied. Brooks glanced up, and waited for the last spectators to leave. It was important, he thought, that no ladies were present to watch what he had planned.
The conservative legal group Judicial Watch filed suit in a federal court demanding that the Department of Justice unseal the search warrant that formed the legal basis for the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s Florida residence, Mar-a-Largo;
“Judicial Watch is investigating the potential politicization of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Justice and whether the FBI and the Justice Department are abusing their law enforcement powers to harass a likely future political opponent of President Biden,” the group’s motion stated.
There’s a reason that you don’t kick a (metaphorical) sleeping giant. It’s a big mistake.
Raiding the private home of President Donald Trump was like kicking that sleeping giant. If people weren’t already fired up to come out to kick the Democrats out, this just made them more energized to do so.
Attorney General Merrick Garland will make an in-person statement on Thursday afternoon after growing calls from Republicans for him to speak out about the FBI’s unannounced search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
It’s not clear what the attorney general will be discussing.
The FBI’s nine-hour raid of Mar-A-Lago on Monday appears at first glance to have been a desperate fishing expedition. But there was something hidden at the former president’s estate that so disturbed the Feds that they felt compelled to take drastic action.
The unprecedented raid at the former president’s estate was carried out without warning. It was allegedly prompted by two ‘inside sources’ who fed the federal agents a tip.
Nine-and-a-half hours of secret snooping, 15 evidence boxes, and a jaunt through the former first lady’s closet later, it’s unclear what exactly FBI agents were looking for and ultimately recovered during their raid of former President Donald Trump’s home in Florida.
Given the bureau’s long track record of malfeasance, however — concocting an elaborate Russia collusion hoax, branding conservative parents as domestic terrorists, labeling anodyne right-wing symbols as extremist dog whistles, entrapping Americans in plots to kidnap radical governors, concluding a stand-off by murdering dozens of children, rigging an election by hiding information that harmed their preferred candidate, and egging on protesters and rioters before branding them as insurrectionists, just to name a few — it isn’t too hard to imagine that some of the things the FBI recovered from Mar-a-Lago weren’t recovered at all, but planted.
h/t Mauser 98
With news of Trump’s home of Mar-a-Lago being raided by the FBI dominating the news, substitute host Dr. Jason Johnson brought on Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank on Monday night’s ReidOut to spread fear that news of the raid would inspire a latter-day Timothy McVeigh to commit an act of terrorism comparable in scale to the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing that killed 168 people and injured nearly 700.
This week, the FBI raided the Florida home of former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. They based their raid on the purported rationale that they suspected Trump of having mishandled classified information, taking home materials meant for the National Archives: according to The New York Times, the search “appeared to be focused on material that Mr. Trump had brought with him to Mar-a-Lago… Those boxes contained many pages of classified documents.” Trump quickly responded with outrage: “After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate. Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries. They even broke into my safe!”
It seems the DOJ has decided to leak an explanation of their decision to use a search warrant in this case. Newsweek just published an exclusive report based on anonymous DOJ sources which claims the FBI had a confidential source at Mar-a-Lago, one who informed them that Trump was hiding documents and even specified where they could be found.
FBI agents scoured Melania Trump’s wardrobe and spent several hours combing through Donald Trump’s private office, breaking open his safe and rifling through drawers when they raided the former First Family’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida Monday morning.
The Post has learned that the search warrant used by the FBI to enter the palatial Palm Beach property focused solely on presidential records and evidence of classified information being stored there.
Trump attorney Alina Habba appeared on Fox News with Jesse Watters. She said that they had been cooperating with the National Archives over the records and that this was completely “unconstitutional.” “Our country should be terrified—I am terrified,” Habba exclaimed. She said the FBI went in when he wasn’t even there, and then told his attorneys to leave, that they couldn’t watch or be there. “That doesn’t sound good to me,” she declared.
Habba said the agents came in wearing backpacks, and she was concerned that they could have planted things since they were trying to get the attorneys out of there. Habba said she believed this was all part of the effort to try to take Trump down, and that people were “working in tandem” with other efforts.
“There is more than people know that you’ll be hearing,” Habba explained. “If he wasn’t ahead in the polls, this wouldn’t be happening.” It’s “100 percent” politically motivated, she declared. “I don’t trust the government, and that’s a very frightening thing as an American,” she said. “This is third-world stuff, this is Cuba. This is not our country.”
We are starting to get more details on what occurred during the FBI’s nearly 10-hour raid of Donald Trump’s home in Florida, though, it’s not the government that’s providing them. On Tuesday evening, Trump’s lawyer revealed that authorities didn’t even want to present a warrant, and when they finally did, the warrant had the probable cause sealed.
As to what was seized, the list is illuminating, and not in a good way for the FBI’s conduct. According to a report from The Washington Post, citing information leaked to them by the government (which says a lot on its own), the boxes taken were full of what would mostly be considered personal effects and mundane presidential records.
“Given the political context, and the highly unusual action of executing a search warrant at the residence of a former President and likely future political opponent, it is essential that the public understands as soon as possible the basis for the government’s action,” states the motion, which was filed by Judicial Watch in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
Donald Trump lamented Wednesday that the FBI blocked any of his staff, including lawyers, from the areas where the FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago home happened on Monday and cast doubt on whether the agents ‘planted’ evidence.
Those working for the former president who were at his Florida estate during the raid refused to turn off security cameras on the premises despite instructions from federal agents to do so, according to The New York Post.
Comes as Trump confirmed on his alternative social media site Tuesday evening that he will be deposed Wednesday in questioning part of the New York attorney general’s civil investigation into his family’s real estate business.
Last night a line was crossed, and everything changed. The home of the former president of the United States and the most likely Republican candidate to run for the presidency in 2024 was raided by the FBI.
How much further will this go before Americans finally realize that this is not just about Donald Trump, it is about THEM.
