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Ray-SoCa's avatar

From Andrew McCarthy’s latest column:

https://nypost.com/2022/08/26/reading-through-the-redacted-lines-of-the-mar-a-lago-raid-affidavit/

“If the former president continues to assail the integrity of law-enforcement officials, however, they might well decide that only a public trial can show who was breaking the law and who was protecting national security.”

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Aug 27, 2022Edited
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Mark Wauck's avatar

McCarthy's reasoning seems weak to me. Going into a trial, much of which will be controlled by judicial rulings on issues that will be appealable, seems like it could be an ill considered move.

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Mark Wauck's avatar

To be more precise, a desire to "get even" is usually a poor reason for pursuing prosecution. Lack of a good case will become obvious to the judge.

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Ray-SoCa's avatar

Rope a dope?

Trump calling Biden a criminal:

https://twitter.com/PapiTrumpo/status/1563226117711884293?

Biden calling Trump and Maga semi Fascist:

https://lidblog.com/maga-supporters/

I guess ultra Maga failed.

Of course Biden compared Trump to Hitler before the election:

https://lidblog.com/biden-harris-uses-hitler-footage/

Perhaps this is Biden’s attempt to change the subject from the Trump FBI Raid?

Or change the subject from Zuckerberg’s admission on the Fbi on the Hunter Biden laptop?

Or just a 2 minutes of hate distraction, or rally the base?

Lots of projection by the Dems going on with an amazing amount of hypocrisy. Seems to be standard fir the Dems to accuse their opponent as a distraction, of what themselves are guilty of.

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Ray-SoCa's avatar

Interesting that Tucker broadcast the FBI’s partisanship with his megaphone:

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/08/26/tucker-carlson-outlines-dramatic-timeline-of-political-corruption-within-the-federal-bureau-of-investigation/#more-237011

Matt Taibbi writes in the non paid intro the media is trying to ignore the raid story:

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-great-disappearing-raid-story

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Mark Wauck's avatar

Possibly they realize this is a loser.

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Ray-SoCa's avatar

Non paywalled Taibbi story:

https://www.reddit.com/r/centrist/comments/wwpf46/the_great_disappearing_raid_story/

Interesting his take on Trumps legal response has been amateurish. Prof Jacobson of Legal Insurrection also questioned why the delayed response by Trumps team. Of course when you risk being ostracized from the legal profession, it limits the amount of lawyers that will work for Trump. Or perhaps Trump is more focused on the public opinion war.

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Mark Wauck's avatar

I've been a bit disappointed myself.

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Charles “Lou” Weissing's avatar

Multiple sources criticize MaL as an “unauthorized” depository of sensitive or classified material. But, in view of its status as a residential location of a then-current President on the date of receipt and storage, how would MaL not qualify as appropriate?

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Mark Wauck's avatar

Right. That's nothing but a smoke screen.

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Lance Gatling's avatar

This is thought provoking - was it all a pretense to recover the goods on Russia/Spygate?

Add a bit of fishing for J6, and it's a toxic mess.

But if Trump declassified it (the binder full of Russiagate docs) there's no reason he didn't make copies, scan, upload some place, and wait for the right time to disclose.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/08/26/a-review-of-the-big-picture-and-stakeholder-interests-within-fbi-affidavit-justifying-raid-on-trump/

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Joseph Kaplan's avatar

We hate Trump! We're going to get him before he has a chance to get us. We dare to try to stop us!

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Mark Wauck's avatar

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/08/26/three-minutes-of-pure-sunlight-the-truth-and-the-constitution-are-president-trumps-weapons/

Sundance is right--homerun Mike Davis. The Fox anchorette--Sandra Smith?--asks all the wrong questions. Someone didn't prepare her. Davis is absolutely right--Garland should have asked for an OLC opinion, just like Bluto DID ask for an OLC on obstruction. The fact that he didn't while he confesses to having deliberated for weeks tells you everything you need to know.

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Mark Wauck's avatar

These two paragraphs at Breitbart give a very clear picture of how flimsy the affidavit and the magistrate's thinking was. Again, nothing of this sort gets submitted--EXCEPT against Trump. The only real justification is GET TRUMP. This simply isn't specific enough or tied closely enough to evidence of a crime. There is no other possible justification of a search warrant. Saying that there's probable cause doesn't make it so--you need specific relevant evidence. All of this looks conclusory to me.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/08/26/affidavit-doj-wasnt-sure-whether-documents-had-defense-information/

In the affidavit, submitted by an FBI special agent, the DOJ argued that based on 15 boxes of materials voluntarily submitted by Trump, which were disorganized and allegedly included documents that had some classified markings, there was probable cause to believe that there were other such documents on the premises, and that they were not being properly, securely stored.

In addition, the DOJ stated that “there is probable cause to believe that additional documents that contain classified NDI [National Defense Information] or that are Presidential records subject to record retention requirements currently remain at the PREMISES.” The key word is “or”; the DOJ did not know exactly what it was looking for. (It added that it might find “evidence of obstruction” — that is, of deliberate refusal to comply with past requests for documents from the White House.)

Thus the DOJ could not state with certainty whether it was seeking to enforce the criminal law against mishandling defense information, or whether it was seeking to enforce the Presidential Records Act, which does not have criminal enforcement.

Later in the affidavit, the FBI special agent admitted that he (or she) did not actually know whether documents with alleged classified markings actually had defense information; however, he (or she) merely asserted that “[b]ased on my training and experience, I know that documents classified at these levels typically contain NDI.”

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EZ's avatar

>>In the affidavit, submitted by an FBI special agent, the DOJ argued that based on 15 boxes of materials voluntarily submitted by Trump, which were disorganized and allegedly included documents that had some classified markings, there was probable cause to believe that there were other such documents on the premises, and that they were not being properly, securely stored.<<

Watch the logic bomb:

The FBI/DOJ argued in their affidavit that because there were some documents in the 15 boxes returned to the National Archives that had "classification markings," it somehow logically follows that it is likely there are MORE classified docs among those Trump retained.

That might make some sense if the 15 boxes were random samples of the full set of documents, but they aren't!

Thus there is NO EVIDENCE AT ALL in the unredacted passages to support the conclusion that the retained docs must also contain classified docs.

Defenders of the search warrant will argue "it's a reasonable inference."

Well, to turn their logic back on them, by that same reasoning, since there is NO EVIDENCE in the unredacted sections of the affidavit that the retained docs contain classified material or even NDI, it follows that there is probable cause to believe the redact sections of the affidavit also do not contain any evidence! Ergo, based on the FBI/DOJ's OWN logic, the search warrant has no evidence that classified marked material would be found at MAR!

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Mark Wauck's avatar

If you feel like you just can't get enough reading about this disgraceful episode, here's a good article:

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/08/26/trump-affidavit-points-to-absolutely-insane-justification-for-the-fbi-raid-n618264

For me, this simply confirms that--reading between the lines--this was a setup job from the get go. It was never legitimately about presidential records. It was always about Trump, and Trump alone. And about CYA for the FBI especially.

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ML's avatar

Yes, and it very much looks like the Nat Archives bunch, afflicted with long TDS, (staffed as they are with any number of what Tucker referred to as “46-year old Cornell -educated lawyers with weak husbands”!) colluded with DOJ (or went along with) to, once again, get Trump.

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Aug 27, 2022Edited
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Ray-SoCa's avatar

Republicans President's are always labeled Hitler.

I recognize the anger and level of viciousness against Trump and his supporters, it’s off the scale.

My guesses on what’s driving it:

1. Class. College educated vs the deplorables.

2. Deliberate demonization, 2 minutes of hate, to rally the base, finding a scapegoat.

3. Social media has created a nasty feedback loop. Twitter is a huge echo chamber. And huge censorship has reduced conservative voices, and any questioning of the narrative.

4. The propaganda / brain washing done in public schools and most colleges.

5. Divide and conquer strategy.

6. Trump punches back, and often makes his attackers appear biased, like idiots, and/ or corrupt. This is extremely rare for a Republican.

7. Trump often ignores Overton Windows, and resets them.

8. eGOP anger at being shown to be castrati / junior members of the uniparty, and corrupt / full of hot air, and out of touch with their voters, but in touch with their big donors. Of identifying more with other elites, rather than their actual voters.

9. The Lefts large institutional capture, including industry elites, media, internet giants, etc.

10. Fear of having your career and family destroyed, if you don’t follow the party line.

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Dave's avatar

Attributed to Bauerline: he wrote this over at Epoch Times.

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