FBI raids Trump’s Mar-a-Lago

[Rick Plant]

Trump's legal bills rocket up after Mar-a-Lago search: report

Former President Donald Trump has dedicated a majority of his political spending to legal bills, according to a new analysis of campaign finance reports.

"Spending by Donald Trump’s Save America PAC surged in August to more than $6.3 million – its highest monthly total of the year – as the former President waged court battles over the FBI’s search of his waterfront Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida," CNN reported. "More than $3.8 million of that money – or more than $6 out of $10 spent by Trump’s leadership PAC last month – went to legal fees, according to filings Tuesday night with the Federal Election Commission."

Of that, $3 million went to an up-front payment to attorney Chris Kise.

"The PAC’s post-election fundraising has come under intense scrutiny in recent weeks. CNN reported earlier this month that a federal grand jury had issued subpoenas that seek information related to the formation, fundraising and expenditures of Save America," CNN reported.

The filing shows Save America spent $150,000 in Wyoming as Trump sought to oust GOP Rep. Liz Cheney.

"Trump’s PAC entered September with more than $92 million in cash reserves, according to the new filings – one of the healthier bank accounts in GOP politics. By comparison, the National Republican Senatorial Committee – the GOP fundraising arm charged with flipping the Senate – started September and the sprint to Election Day with just $16 million remaining in the bank," CNN reported. "Trump has faced public pressure to provide more financial help to Republican Senate candidates, some of whom are struggling to compete financially with their Democratic rivals ahead of November’s general election."

On on Tuesday, GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell's PAC canceled $9.6 million in ads it had reserved in Arizona to help Blake Masters, is facing Sen. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut.

Read the full report:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/20/politics/trump-save-america-pac-legal-payments-surge/index.html

[Rick Plant]

Trump's special master legal team is 'on its heels' and only has two options left: analyst

On the morning after the latest major test of Donald Trump's attempt to slow down the DOJ's investigation of the classified documents he took with him to his Mar-a-Lago resort, Politico's political analyst Josh Gerstein claimed the former president's attorneys seemed to be grasping for a defense under withering grilling under special master Raymond Dearie.

Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" early Wednesday morning, Gerstein was joined by former U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg, and neither saw much that happened that would make Trump happy.

Speaking with co-host Mika Brzezinski, Gerstein -- who was in the courtroom -- said it appeared the former president's legal representatives appeared to be "back on their heels" as they struggled to address Dearie's questions.

"Josh, break down what happened in court yesterday," the MSNBC host prompted. "What exactly is their defense to what the judge now is requesting, requiring and asking for? Which is basics?"

"Well, Mika you know, it seemed the judge called this hearing with the intention of kind of putting the Trump legal team on their heels a little bit, and making it clear he was going to drive the timing of this process and they were going to have to come forward, as you discussed with Chuck, with evidence if they're going to keep pushing this claim about declassification," he reported.

"It seemed to me sitting there in the courtroom with Judge Dearie, he was very soft-spoken, but he would offer these kind of almost caustic rebuttals sometimes to what the Trump lawyers said," he added. "It seemed like defense lawyers in a case that hasn't been filed. right? No criminal charges. At this point, they have two options open to defend Trump. One is sort of an ignorance defense, maybe he didn't know exactly what documents were down there at Mar-a-Lago and therefore, he couldn't be responsible for that. And the other is this declassification claim."

"Which defense they want to use would depend on what charges the government brings, " he continued. "If it's a charge about classified information, maybe they would try a declassification defense. But if it's just going to be a claim that caused lies to be told to the U.S. government or obstruction of justice, they might want to go in a different direction saying he didn't really know what he had; there's a lot of news clippings and memorabilia, and maybe something classified in those boxes but he's a busy guy."

"They just don't want to pick now which defense they want to use, and they made that abundantly clear in the courtroom yesterday," he summed up.

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Criminal Donald now claims he had the power to declassify documents just “by thinking about it.” No really, he said this. Mind control as a criminal defense. What’s left of his psyche is shattering under the pressure. He knows it’s all over for him. 

[Rick Plant]

'Trump's worst day ever’: legal experts weigh in after ex-president was ‘obliterated' in court

Donald Trump suffered a very bad day legally after being sued in New York and losing his Mar-a-Lago case before a federal appeals court in Georgia.

"An appeals court sided with the Justice Department in a legal fight over classified documents seized in a court-authorized search of former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, ruling Wednesday that the FBI may use the documents in its ongoing criminal investigation," The Washington Post reported. "The ruling by a three-judge panel of the appeals court marks a victory, at least temporarily, for the Justice Department in its legal battle with Trump over access to the evidence seized in a high-stakes national security investigation to determine if the former president or his advisers mishandled national security secrets or hid or destroyed government records."

Legal experts saw it as a major loss for Trump, who is unable to appeal to the full 11th Circuit Court under the court's Rule 35-4.

"The Eleventh Circuit’s rules don’t allow for en banc review of panel decisions on emergency applications," wrote University of Texas Law Prof. Steve Vladeck. "It’s [Supreme Court] or bust at this point."

"Trump has the right to now ask [Supreme Court] to vacate the Eleventh Circuit’s partial stay and put Judge Cannon’s ruling back into effect," Vladeck explained. "But suffice it to say, I think the odds of there being five votes to override this ruling — even on *this* Court — are exceedingly close to zero."

Former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal suggested Trump's push for a special master backfired.

"The Court of Appeals ruling is not only a straight repudiation of every legal claim Trump has made since Mar a Lago searched, it's a boomerang," Katyal wrote. "Trump's legal args backfired-Ct powerfully explains why criminal and national security implications are so massive. Court just justified a prosecution."

"It’s really hard to lose an appeal more decisively than Trump just did," Katyal wrote. "This criminal investigation now goes forward with the imprimatur and blessing of the US Court of Appeals, and their explanation of how important this investigation is."

Former White House ethics czar Norm Eisen declared it, "Donald Trump's worst day ever."

Read More Here: https://twitter.com/neal_katyal/status/1572742068786835460

[Rick Plant]

DOJ wins at appeals court over Trump judge's controversial ruling

On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit stayed a controversial ruling by a Florida district court judge that had effectively blocked the Justice Department and national security agencies from reviewing highly classified documents seized by the FBI at former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort.

That order, by Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon, had found that the former president had a compelling interest to those documents not being accessed by the executive branch until a special master had reviewed them for privilege, including executive privilege on behalf of Trump — even though no court has ever ruled former presidents have such privilege or that this privilege outweighs the U.S. government's interest in preventing breaches of classified information.

In the 11th Circuit order obtained by POLITICO, a panel of three judges — including two who were also appointed by Trump — put that order on hold, suggesting that the Justice Department is likely to prevail against Trump on the merits.

According to the ruling, Trump "has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents. Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents."

Other parts of Cannon's ruling, including that appointing the special master, were left in place, as the Justice Department did not object to those measures.

This comes one day after the special master Cannon appointed, Senior Judge Raymond Dearie, harshly grilled Trump's attorneys in his first hearing on the classified documents, demanding that they take a position on the former president's repeated public claims that he had retroactively declassified that information — noting that the DOJ has already provided "prima facie" evidence the documents should in fact be presumed classified.

https://www.rawstory.com/11th-circuit-trump-doj/



"Judge Cannon" completely bungled her job — and got rightly smacked down: Former prosecutor



On MSNBC Wednesday, former federal prosecutor Harry Litman broke down the new Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruling placing a stay on right-wing Judge Aileen Cannon's order that effectively prohibited the Justice Department from investigating the classified documents former President Donald Trump had stashed at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

The decision, Litman argued, was a victory for justice, and a rebuke of Cannon's poor legal analysis.

"This ruling just came out, the three-judge panel — we should, say two of them, those judges appointed by Donald Trump," said anchor Chris Hayes. "All three finding that for the government, give us a rundown of what they said?"

"You know, couldn't be more definitive," said Litman. "There is a matter-of-fact tone to it. You read it, and really what comes through is that this is so obvious. It's like waking from a nightmare. We have people who looked at these other opinions by Judge Cannon, trying to explain that these were not in some subtle way arguably right. They were completely off the reservation. And you read these 27 pages — it is a per curiam by the way, the three judges decide to show their unity being together. They almost surely have been writing it over the course of the week. So clear was it what she did was wrong."

"They just settle down and rebuke everything she said," continued Litman. "'We cannot discern' — that's not what you want to hear in the court of appeal — 'we cannot discern a reason why there is a possessory interest.' Any injury for having to be subject of a criminal investigation, like anyone else. She had given him special treatment. Forget about it. One after the other, very methodical."

"I am dramatic. But when you of course take a step back and see how comprehensive it is, it just completely rebukes everything she did," added Litman. "You know? It's some restoration of faith after a truly heart-stoppingly bad set of opinions from her. What they get, by the way, is exactly what she refused to give them in her second opinion. They now have the hundred classified documents. They have taken other things off the table. It argues poorly for her continued mischief in the case."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Watch: Trump tells Sean Hannity he could declassify documents with his mind



Donald Trump on Wednesday argued that a president of the United States can declassify documents without speaking or writing a single word.

Trump, fresh off a major defeat in the Mar-a-Lago documents case before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, was interviewed on Fox News by Sean Hannity.

"You have said on Truth Social, a number of times, you did declassify," Hannity said.

"I did declassify," Trump claimed, even though his attorneys have not made that argument in courtrooms in Florida, New York, or Georgia.

"What was your process to declassify?" Hannity asked.

"There doesn't have to be a process, as I understand it," Trump replied. "You know, there's different people, say different things."

"If you're the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying, 'it's declassified' — even by thinking about it," Trump claimed.

Whether or not the documents were declassified is irrelevant to the three crimes the FBI said it was investigating in its search warrant application. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday, "declassification argument is a red herring because declassifying an official document would not change its content or render it personal."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Trump's telepathic declassification defense met with scorn and derision by legal scholars



Legal experts on Wednesday largely disagreed with Donald Trump's Fox News argument that he had the ability to declassify documents with his mind.

"There doesn't have to be a process, as I understand it. You know, there's different people, say different things," Trump told Sean Hannity. "If you're the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying, 'it's declassified' — even by thinking about it."

Attorney and former FBI Agent Asha Rangappa joked, "he’s actually invoking the Secret Telepathic Unilateral Preemptive Irreversible Declassification (S.T.U.P.I.D.) defense."

The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) wrote, "that's beyond wrong, it's insane."

On MSNBC, anchor Lawrence O'Donnell played a clip of the interview and asked national security lawyer Bradley Moss for analysis.

"Yeah, I saw that clip right before I came on and I tried not to burst out laughing," Moss replied.

Moss noticed that judges ruled three times during the Trump administration that the declassification process must occur.

"If he is sitting there and thinking in his mind 'hey, I decided I'm going to declassify the secrets about Iran tonight,' the NSA needs to know if there was their signals intelligence or CIA needs to know," Moss explained. "You can just willy-nilly do it and that's his big problem."

"That's why there is no declaration in the civil case proving he declassified anything," Moss said. "Because he's got nothing, zero, zippo, zilch, nada."

Watch: