Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Breaking news reports say Mar a Lago has been raided by a large number of FBI agents. Stay tuned!

[Rick Plant]

FBI search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home tied to classified material, sources say

In a lengthy statement Monday night, Trump said, “They even broke into my safe!"

MIAMI — Former President Donald Trump said Monday that the FBI "raided" his home at Mar-a-Lago in Florida and even cracked his safe, with a source familiar with the matter telling NBC News that the search was tied to classified information Trump allegedly took with him from the White House to his Palm Beach resort in January 2021.

Trump also claimed in a written statement that the search — unprecedented in American history — was politically motivated, although he did not provide specifics.

“These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” Trump said in a lengthy email statement issued by his Save America political committee.

“After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate,” Trump said before bemoaning: “They even broke into my safe!”

Trump lawyer Christina Bobb, who said she was present for Monday’s search, told NBC News that Trump and his team have been “cooperative with FBI and DOJ officials every step of the way,” while adding that the bureau “did conduct an unannounced raid and seized paper.”

A senior government official told NBC News that the FBI was at Mar-a-Largo “for the majority of the day” and confirmed that the search warrant was connected to the National Archives.

Trump this year had to return 15 boxes of documents that were improperly taken from the White House, the National Archives and Records Administration, or NARA, said in February.

“In mid-January 2022, NARA arranged for the transport from the Trump Mar-a-Lago property in Florida to the National Archives of 15 boxes that contained Presidential records, following discussions with President Trump’s representatives in 2021,” the National Archives said in a statement Feb. 7.

The same month, the National Archives and Records Administration asked the Justice Department to examine whether Trump’s handling of White House records violated federal law, a story first reported by The Washington Post and subsequently confirmed by NBC News sources.

The New York Times on Monday first reported the FBI focus on the National Archives materials.

Just hours before agents searched Trump's residence, the FBI notified the Secret Service about the bureau’s plans to execute the warrant, according to a Secret Service official. The Secret Service facilitated access to the property, the official said, but did not participate in any aspect of the search.

At Justice Department headquarters, a spokesperson declined to comment. An official at the FBI Washington field office also declined to comment, and an official at the FBI field office in Miami declined to comment as well.

A senior law enforcement official in Florida confirmed that there was "law enforcement activity" at Mar-a-Largo on Monday.

The White House said it was not given a heads up.

“We did not have notice of the reported action and would refer you to the Justice Department for any additional information,” a White House official said.

Trump is not at Mar-a-Lago, his winter residence. He often spends his summers at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey.

The FBI search came days after Attorney General Merrick Garland told NBC News that the “most wide-ranging investigation” in Justice Department history was examining not only the rioters who invaded the Capitol and physically attacked officers, but also whether anyone was “criminally responsible for interfering with the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to another.”

The search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate came just over six years after another FBI action surrounding classified material that set the stage for Trump’s 2016 Electoral College victory: former FBI Director James Comey’s July 5, 2016, news conference about Trump's Democratic rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Comey, who broke with Justice Department protocol, declared at the time that Clinton and her colleagues were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” even though he said the facts did not support bringing criminal charges.

Trump was a persistent critic of Clinton's handling of classified material, claiming in 2016 that it was “the biggest political scandal since Watergate.” It was Comey's handling of the Clinton matter that was used as justification for Trump's decision to fire Comey. Trump eventually replaced Comey with Christopher Wray. He remains in the position.

Republicans rallied around their party's de facto leader, who is weighing another run for president.

“The @FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago is incredibly concerning, especially given the Biden admin’s history of going after parents & other political opponents. This is 3rd World country stuff,” Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who leads the Senate GOP's campaign arm, said on Twitter.

“We need answers NOW,” Scott added, summing up the mood of many Republicans. “The FBI must explain what they were doing today & why.”

Scott’s reaction is an early sign of the fierce political blowback the Justice Department is likely to face for investigating Trump, underscoring the numerous challenges that would come with potentially prosecuting a former president who is both a likely White House candidate and the most influential figure in the GOP.

Trump is the focus of multiple investigations, including a criminal inquiry in Georgia concerning allegations of election interference and a New York civil probe into whether he fraudulently represented his finances to the state. Trump was in the New York area Monday as he prepared to give a deposition in that case.

But the biggest federal investigation swirling around Trump concerns his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, which resulted in his second impeachment and is the subject of a House committee examining the uprising.

Trump has not been charged in any of those investigations.

Of how Monday's law enforcement action might affect Trump’s political aspirations, a person close to Trump said: “If he wasn’t running before, he is now.”

The source, who was not authorized to speak publicly, appeared to be suggesting that Trump might benefit from being an active candidate for the presidency if he faces legal jeopardy.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-says-mar-lago-home-was-raided-large-group-fbi-agents-rcna42133

[Rick Plant]

'This looks nefarious': CNN's Dana Bash says Trump's document toilet flushing is clearly 'not legal'



CNN's Dana Bash on Monday said that former President Donald Trump could face further legal scrutiny over new photos that back up claims that he regularly flushed presidential records down the toilet.

Reacting to a report from Axios about photos of flushed documents provided by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, Bash said that such actions would clearly break laws regarding the preservation of presidential records.

"It's not legal," she said. "I mean, there is a law that is in place since the era post-Nixon that you have to preserve presidential records -- that is the people who work in the White House and the man who was elected to the White House. And that is the rule. Which is why you have seen reporting from Maggie and others, the then-president had a habit of ripping things up and throwing them in the trash."

She then said she could think of few reasonable justifications for flushing the documents.

"This looks nefarious," she said. "We don't know the specifics. I don't know if we're going to get to the bottom of what exactly was in there, because you're going to have to have the former president cop to it. There's no indication that is something he would do."

Nonetheless, Bash said the photos provided compelling evidence that they were authentic White House documents.

"It's a sharpie and it looks like Donald Trump's handwriting," she said of the torn-up documents photographed in the toilet.

Watch the video below:

[Rick Plant]

'I'd be advising my client to tell their family I'm looking at jail time': Mueller prosecutor on the FBI's Trump raid



Former Justice Department prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who worked on special counsel Robert Mueller's team, explained on MSNBC that if he was advising a client facing what former President Donald Trump is, there would be a strong warning.

"If I were Donald Trump's lawyer right now, thank God I'm not, I would be advising my client to be telling [their] family, 'I am looking at jail time, and we should make plans accordingly.'"

After House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) threatened Attorney General Merrick Garland, Weissmann said that he should just keep his head down and keep doing his job.

"That is such a palpably false statement, the comment from Mr. McCarthy that he is seen enough," said Weissmann. "One of the things that none of us has seen is the warrant, an application to the court. It's very important to remember this was not a break-in, this was not a raid, this was not the attorney general of the United States deciding willy-nilly on his own that he was going to do the search. A court had to approve the search here based on, as you point out Lawrence, evidence. The evidence had to show that there was probable cause of a crime. That is the way our judicial system works, and that is what happened here."

While McCarthy may want to hold a public hearing of Garland and demand documents, what the Republicans might ultimately end up doing is drawing additional attention to what Trump stole or attempted to destroy.

"I think the thing that I found the most remarkable and I think it's really worth people really taking a step back, is this does mean the attorney general of the United States did not trust the former president to simply produce the documents voluntarily pursuant to a subpoena," said Weissmann. "And it was necessary to go via search warrant. Normally, you think that if you order a subpoena to any reputable person they will produce documents. When you issue and obtain a search warrant, it is because you do not trust that the person will actually produce the documents. That means if they had to have evidence of that that led Merrick Garland to take this step. It was bold but certainly approved by the courts."

He went on to joke that the irony is that, all of the sudden, Kevin McCarthy cares about document preservation.

"The Trump administration pioneered all these different ways of doing it from flushing it down the toilet, to burning it in the White House fireplace," recalled Weissmann. "Points for creativity, but, all in all, I don't think I expect a statement from the Justice Department about [McCarthy's threats]."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Legal expert slams Trump allies for pushing 'empty political promise' to undo his Wisconsin loss



On Monday's edition of MSNBC's "Deadline: White House," former solicitor general Neal Katyal discussed the latest push by former President Donald Trump and his allies to "decertify" President Joe Biden's 2020 win of the state of Wisconsin.

The premise, which is a core dispute as Wisconsin GOP voters decide the gubernatorial primary, makes no sense, argued Katyal.

"I can't help but think that if you watch these events unfold in our politics and you think to yourself that there could be some kind of a way to, like, decertify these arguments, like just kind of a priori, they should be knocked out of our politics," said anchor John Heilemann. "This is not a question of opinion or where you stand on public policy. This is not a doable thing. Why are we discussing it in any context right now in the state of Wisconsin?"

"I completely agree," said Katyal. "This Wisconsin primary is a really good illustration of how Trump and the Republican Party have succeeded in normalizing a brand of basically post-truth politics that allows them to blow off facts that they find inconvenient. And so, you say, there should be some way to decertify these claims, and there is. 62 different courts, federal and state, including the U.S. Supreme Court, which is not exactly in Joe Biden's pocket, ruled against them time and time again. And so, the — what the Trump people are saying is, well, look, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which is quite a — it's a very conservative court, in July, said that the drop boxes that were used in the 2020 election were illegal, and these were the drop boxes that were used during the COVID pandemic. And the result of this, they say, is, well, let's throw out the hundreds of thousands of people who voted that way."

That idea, said Katyal, is "an unconscionable argument."

"In elections law, the touchstone is always trying to give effect to the will of the voters, and they just want to toss out all these ballots," said Katyal. "Now, that's something that might work in, like, the Soviet Union, but it's as profoundly un-American as you can get ... even if it were right, there's no backsies here. There's no way to get a redo and do the election again. You know this is basically an empty political process by these people in Wisconsin. There's no mechanism whatsoever to take back the certification. These promises are literally ones that these candidates cannot keep, which takes, I guess, election politics to a whole other level."

Watch:

Nicolle Wallace comes off of vacation break to explain how Republicans will respond to Trump raid

Nicolle Wallace, who previously worked in George W. Bush's White House, was asked how the GOP will likely respond to the news that Trump removed 15 boxes of documents from the White House that were supposed to be sent to the National Archives.

She cited Steven Ayers, a former supporter of President Donald Trump who appeared before the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack and the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election. After following Trump, Ayers was charged with crimes and made it clear that he felt manipulated.

"He's an insurrectionist turned January 6 select committee public witness who I think was an important window into how brazenly Trump and his media allies, people like Tucker Carlson, feed lies to the base," said Wallace. "But I would hope some of the people who may be on the fence in that endeavor would look like at Bill Barr, you know, defying and laughing and making a mockery out of Trump's lies and nonsense, calling them BS, over and over again."

Wallace went on to explain that while there might be a number of things that are political that Trump could be attacked over, the destruction of documents or stealing of classified information is something that is the least of them.

"Everyone close to Trump knows he's a liar," she explained. "They're acutely aware of his penchant for mishandling classified information. Trump has been mishandling classified information and you covered it at the time since [Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov wormed his way back into the Oval Office in 2017. I believe the National Security Advisor was either witness to it or tried to stop it or stem it. But if that is the crime for which there was probable cause to seek a search warrant, then we have our first window into how potential crimes by the ex-president are viewed by this Justice Department."

She went on to say that there is a "tsunami of questions" that "far outweigh the revelations on a night like tonight."

"We may just be learning the very first things we will know from now forward. As your first words tonight made clear, we've never done this before, but we may be learning the very first things there to know about how Merrick Garland and Lisa Monaco view potential crimes committed by an ex-American president," said Wallace.

Watch:

'It's never good': Michael Cohen responds to revelations Trump was raided by FBI



Former President Donald Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen was the unfortunate target of the Republican leader's attacks and retaliation, but on Monday evening he learned that his former client was falling under a raid of his own.

It was reported Monday evening that Trump's home at Mar-a-Lago was under a raid from the FBI. Trump even released in a statement, "they even broke into my safe."

"It’s never good when the FBI raids your property; especially when you’re Donald Trump and you’ve been storing documents at that location," Cohen said.

Cohen was referencing the report on Monday that there are photos of documents that Trump tore apart and threw in the toilet. There were previous reports that Trump attempted to destroy documents by flushing them, causing serious plumbing issues at the White House.

Several months ago, staff from the National Archives were forced to go to Mar-a-Lago and retrieve a truckload of boxes filled with documents that Trump took from the White House when he left. It was revealed that some of the documents were so top secret that they were for the president's eyes only.

AFP

[Rick Plant]

If Trump is convicted of destruction of documents he is barred from the presidency: legal experts



Former federal prosecutor Harry Litman and Democratic elections lawyer Marc Elias both noted that if the reports are true that the decisions behind the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago has to do with the documents he took from the White House, it would be a crime that, if he was convicted, could bar the former president from ever holding office again.

"This, is by far, not one of the biggest crimes he's been charged with, but, it carries the penalty, that someone who is convicted of it is disqualified from running for future federal office," said Litman. "So, 18 USC 2071, if you destroyed records, when they came and talk to him a few months ago, and carted stuff away. Much of it was documents that have been ripped up. You had, just today, pictures of them stuffing things down the toilet. They may have decided to go after this, disqualify him from future office, secure a conviction, and have that be the broad resolution of the whole problem of Trump. That, in any event, it's huge, but this feature of it that he couldn't run for office in the future is really an enormous aspect of it."

Elias made the same point, saying that the media is missing the big reason why the raid is important. He showed a screen capture of the code that Litman cited, that mentions "concealment, removal, or mutilation generally" of documents. It goes on to proclaim that anyone convicted "shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States."

"Yes, I recognize the legal challenge that application of this law to a president would garner (Since qualifications are set in Constitution). But the idea that a candidate would have to litigate this during a campaign is in my view a 'blockbuster in American politics,'" said Elias.

Watch:

Time to negotiate is 'long gone': Former official explains why the FBI raided Trump



Former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi walked MSNBC viewers through what the Miami Field Office had to do to execute today's search warrant on Mar-a-Lago.

"High degree of certainty that it is related to the national archives documents," he told MSNBC.

"So, Jason, yeah, not only did I spend 25 years in the FBI but I spent a significant portion of it in the Miami field office which is responsible, of course, for West Palm Beach and the Mar-a-Lago location," explained Figliuzzi. "So, look, not a lot of time right now for internal intersection going on in the Miami field office and/or any other agents from other field offices that came in but rather let's do this job right. They clearly understand the public scrutiny that will be involved. The gravity of the situation and, of course, what's coming next, which will be endless rhetoric from Donald Trump about how horrible the FBI is and how this is a targeted fishing expedition. What we don't know, of course, is really what the substance of this is."

He went on to say that if it was connected to Jan. 6 it is unclear. However, the New York Times and CNN have sources confirming that the raid focused on the National Archives documents. Figiluzzi also confirmed it with as much certainty as he could.

"If you want, if you haven't done this already, to just walk through the process of a federal agent obtaining a search warrant," he continued. "If you want to just go through that and what it means and what it doesn't mean so it simply means that the agents decided and, of course, at this level when you're talking about a former president, this will be cleared at the highest level of the FBI, U.S. Department of Justice and likely crossed the desk of the attorney general of the United States and you have to go to a United States magistrate with a prosecutor and assistant U.S. Attorney and say, 'we have evidence, probable cause, that a federal crime has been violated, and, number two, that evidence of that crime is located in the location we wish to search.' That's the big one, right?"

The magistrate or judge would then look at that and decide how they would move forward.

"Imagine the federal judge or magistrate that may have gotten out of bed this morning," said Figliuzzi. "I've done that before, right, and he's reading through a lengthy affidavit, and he's got to like have his coffee or her coffee and go through it and say holy cow, that's Mar-a-Lago."

He explained the irony of Trump attacking former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her treatment of classified emails. But when he had explicitly top-secret and classified documents, he paraded them around from the White House to Mar-a-Lago.

"I understand he's out of town, maybe he will have his aides try to do something. But rest assured, they will keep the site secure and free from anyone tampering with what they are doing," said Figliuzzi. "No one will be allowed to destroy any evidence. That won't happen."

He went on to confirm, "I have a medium to high degree of certainty that this at least is focused in part on national archives case...The time to negotiate and turn everything over is long gone, and now we've reached the point where agents are convincing a judge that they have evidence of a crime."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Trump 'panicked' after FBI showed up at Mar-a-Lago because he never believed they would do it: Mary Trump



Appearing on MSNBC hours after the FBI showed up at Mar-a-Lago with a warrant, and Donald Trump issued a furious statement protesting his innocence, his niece Mary Trump said she saw evidence of panic in his response.

Speaking with host Lawrence O'Donnell, the niece was asked if her uncle was going to sleep well after the raid.

"This kind of thing couldn't have happened without his lawyers knowing," the MSNBNC hosts prompted. "There were plenty of hints."

"They're not really breaking in, they're just doing their job," she first said of the FBI agents before noting that her uncle is "Panicked."

"This is just an example, in a very long line of examples, of Donald's narcissism and sense of entitlement," she continued. "He may have known it was coming but he could not possibly believe it was coming because it never has."

"How is your uncle going to sleep tonight,?" the MSNBC host asked.

"You know, probably as well as he always sleeps," the smiling Mary Trump answered. "Which is to say, not well. Because, you know, there are so many things dogging him in the last many years. He was in New York today because he needs to sit for a deposition in another case. So it is all coming sort of fast and furious."

Watch: