More Trump raid fallout: is there anyone on earth naive enough to believe the DOJ on this?
The raid on Mar-a-Lago was based largely on information from an FBI confidential human source, one who was able to identify what classified documents former President Trump was still hiding and even the location of those documents, two senior government officials told Newsweek.
The officials, who have direct knowledge of the FBI’s deliberations and were granted anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters…
So we can assume these are FBI and/or DOJ agents leaking this story. What portion of it is the truth is unknown, of course – after all, this is the FBI, folks. They lie to us; we don’t get to lie to them.
But either way – true or false – the disclosure of the “confidential human source” is almost as shocking as the Mar-A-Lago raid itself. If true, it means there’s a mole in Trump’s inner circle, perhaps planted, encouraged, and paid by the FBI. So yes, they’re still spying on him and now they’re bragging about it? I’m sure some people would be pleased with this, but only those who already hate him. I think even some of the mild haters or the lukewarm would feel uneasy about it, as it underlines the corrupt nature of the FBI as a modern-day Democrat spy agency.
And if false, why would the agents believe this would be a good cover story? Well, it explains how they got the information to obtain the search warrant, but its “unprecendented” nature is almost certainly offputting and frightening to quite a few people, including those who aren’t huge Trump supporters but who see that this is something that can happen to anyone who opposes the left, and even perhaps to them. It seems – to use a quaint phrase – un-American.
More:
FBI decision-makers in Washington and Miami thought that denying the former president a photo opportunity or a platform from which to grandstand (or to attempt to thwart the raid) would lower the profile of the event, says one of the sources, a senior Justice Department official who is a 30-year veteran of the FBI.
Excuse me? If true, that’s one of the single stupidest calculations I’ve heard in quite some time. And if false, it’s a lie of transparent absurdity.
Next:
The effort to keep the raid low-key failed: instead, it prompted a furious response from GOP leaders and Trump supporters. “What a spectacular backfire,” says the Justice official.
Republicans pounce! Actually, it wasn’t and isn’t just Republicans. Are the DOJ and FBI so dense and out of touch they didn’t see the backlash coming, or is this just more blah blah BS meant to fool no one?
And this next paragraph is theater of the absurd:
“I know that there is much speculation out there that this is political persecution, but it is really the best and the worst of the bureaucracy in action,” the official says. “They wanted to punctuate the fact that this was a routine law enforcement action, stripped of any political overtones, and yet [they] got exactly the opposite.”
Is he or she joking? Tweaking and teasing us with statements so ludicrous a child would find them laughable? I know that the Soviet used to do that and perhaps that’s the point here – to tell us the most prepostorous lies as a sort of mockery. But in case the agencies were truly that clueless, let me just say that it is glaringly obvious to all but the most partisan hacks that this is a political operation and not a “routine law enforcement action,” if only for the simple reason that nothing of the sort has ever happened before to a former president and possible/probably future presidential nominee and opponent of the current administration.
Next:
“They were seeking to avoid any media circus,” says the second source, a senior intelligence official who was briefed on the investigation and the operation. “So even though everything made sense bureaucratically and the FBI feared that the documents might be destroyed, they also created the very firestorm they sought to avoid, in ignoring the fallout.”
One and a half years those documents were sitting there without being destroyed, the government had paid a visit and looked at them already, Trump’s lawyers were cooperating, Trump wasn’t even home, and suddenly there’s all this urgency that the FBI has to send two dozen or more agents to the home and spend nine hours doing this task? Speaking of which – if the informant told them exactly where everything was, what’s up with the nine hours?
I begin to wonder whether this supposed mole was a double agent, setting the FBI up for an embarrassing failure.
After that, the article goes into a lengthy discussion of the Archives and the Presidential Records Act, but somehow omits that fact that violations are almost never treated as criminal, even then they are usually considered misdemeanors, no potential violator has ever been subject to a raid, and they have never been enforced against an ex-president. Then:
The affidavit to obtain the search warrant, the intelligence source says, contained abundant and persuasive detail that Trump continued to possess the relevant records in violation of federal law, and that investigators had sufficient information to prove that those records were located at Mar-a-Lago—including the detail that they were contained in a specific safe in a specific room.
Ah, that’s why they’re telling us about the supposed informant. This information must have come from that person. Of course, according to Trump’s family, that “specific safe” – which was opened by an FBI safecracker, in a scene apparently worthy of Geraldo and Al Capone’s vault – was empty. I repeat: was the informant setting up the FBI? Or just plain lying? Or non-existent?
“In order for the investigators to convince the Florida judge to approve such an unprecedented raid, the information had to be solid, which the FBI claimed,” says the intelligence source.
Tell us another one – you already used that story up with Russiagate and the FISA court, and we know that the right judge will approve garbage. But I don’t for a moment doubt that the FBI claimed their information was solid.
The construction of this paragraph is a little strange:
Though Trump and his Republican Party allies are portraying the raid as politically motivated, it is likely the unprecedented nature of the raid on the property of a former president will have the greatest reverberation. Even Trump’s political rivals have rallied in condemning the FBI.
In other words, what I think this is trying to convey is that of course Trump allies say it’s political. But one doesn’t have to listen to them or even like Trump to observe that it is political – it’s obvious that it is.
And then we have another preposterous assertion:
The Biden White House says the president was not briefed about the Mar-a-Lago raid and knew nothing about it in advance.
So we’re supposed to be reassured by the idea that the FBI didn’t feel the need to run it by the White House – which I don’t for a minute believe anyway? Note that the statement is not saying that the White House didn’t approve of the general idea of such a raid – just that they were purposely not kept abreast of the schedule and the specific details of this one. And the White House is saying “no comment,” because it can.
Also:
The senior Justice Department source says that Garland was regularly briefed on the Records Act investigation, and that he knew about the grand jury and what material federal prosecutors were seeking. He insists, though, that Garland had no prior knowledge of the date and time of the specific raid, nor was he asked to approve it. “I know it’s hard for people to believe,” says the official, “but this was a matter for the U.S. Attorney and the FBI.”
You got that right – it’s hard for people to believe. And again, it wouldn’t be the least bit reassuring even if it were true, because it would mean the FBI is not just the secret police, but a secret police entity answerable to no one.
Here’s the conclusion of the article:
FBI director Christopher Wray ultimately gave his go-ahead to conduct the raid, the senior Justice official says. “It really is a case of the Bureau misreading the impact.”
Ah, so it was Wray, was it? The buck stops with him? Again, it’s very difficult if not impossible to imagine that’s true. But then again, maybe he is just arrogant enough – as demonstrated by his recent Congressional testimony, prior to the raid – to do such a thing on his own. And they either stupidly “misread” the impact or they jut don’t care about the impact because they believe their power is unassailable.
Another strange thing about this entire episode is that I think quite a few people who thought Trump was full of it when he talked about the 2020 election being stolen might be seeing what the FBI has just done and thinking: Hey, wait a minute; if they are willing to do something like this to stop Trump from running, maybe they really did rig the 2020 election. The intensity of the hatred of Trump and the desperate Ahab-like desire to get him is very much out in the open here.
The other day I quoted a speech that Captain Ahab made just before his fatal last attempt to kill Moby Dick. It seems apropos to quote it again, but this time I’m going to quote more of it:
Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! THUS, I give up the spear!”
The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting velocity the line ran through the grooves;–ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the heavy eye-splice in the rope’s final end flew out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea, disappeared in its depths.
For an instant, the tranced boat’s crew stood still; then turned. “The ship? Great God, where is the ship?” Soon they through dim, bewildering mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata Morgana; only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the pagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea. And now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out of sight.
One thought that occurred to me when I first saw this Newsweek article is that it’s Newsweek; which has not been reliable actual news source for decade(s).
Garland just gave a press conference where he claimed he personally approved the search warrant, which makes it almost impossible to pretend this was just a normal everyday law enforcement action AND that it’s incredibly disturbing if he actually did this without informing the Biden White House, which is what they’ve said.
And it should always be kept in mind that as much as they hate Trump, the real issue is they cannot and will not accept that not everyone hates him. The crisis is less about their undemocratic mindset, which has existed in other U.S. politicians in the past, and more that their complete lack of regard or respect for the other side is leading them to stunningly reckless and offensive acts that virtually beg for reckless and offensive responses.
Oh, and we should also note that one of the main things that has greased the wheels that got us here was the media utterly abandoning any effort to police the Democrats or the Left during the Obama Administration. It is not an exaggeration to say a lot of 20 and even early 30something journalists have no idea how to be fair to people they despise and tough on people they like. That lack of external pushback only makes it easier for bad behavior to grow and expand.
Mike
“classified documents former President Trump was still hiding”
Maybe I’m a little unclear on this point, but it’s my understanding that a president can determine what is classified or not. So if Trump left office with some material that was “classified”, he had every right to posses it and therefore wasn’t “hiding” it or whatever.
Democrats and the brainless lackeys of the current regime in the media are now claiming that any opposition to and any criticism of the thoroughly corrupt and Stasi-like FBI/DOJ represent a dangerous attack on federal law enforcement, just as the fully-justified outrage felt by most conservatives at the murder of Ashli by a member of the Capitol Police is routinely denounced by those who defended the utterly insane movement “to defund the police” a mere two years ago. It would seem as though leftists favored “free speech” only so that they could use the concept to attain power and as though they denounced the police only until law enforcement could be corrupted, federalized, and used, in the Soviet manner, as a weapon against the ideological enemy.
“the disclosure of the confidential human source is almost as shocking as the Mar-A-Lago raid itself. If true”
If this is simply bumbling gov’t it doesn’t mean too much.
Like you, I look at the level of absurdity of explanations and don’t buy that line, though. So … if it’s war, then this may be the common tactic used to insert distrust into the enemy camp and perhaps waste some resources by forcing them to look for a traitor.
A fairly common rumor/explanation for what’s happening is that PDJT declassified some docs which show the FBI/DoJ being complicit in Democrat lies which had already been refuted when the FBI chose to act as if they were true.
The documents were not released due to the treacherous AG Barr. The docs were known to be at Mar-a-lago, the Trump folks had been in discussion with lawyers, a lock on the door had been installed as requested by DoJ lawyers, etc, etc. There was minimal or zero reason for the raid. But perhaps they suddenly wanted the documents back so Biden could reclassify them?
At least so it’s being said.
I think the Swamp doesn’t care anymore. A Rubicon has been crossed, watch yourself carefully if you are in a Blue area surrounded by Good Germans. So many of the commenters here have seen the pattern for quite a long time yet “politically moderate” friends and acquaintances still seem completely oblivious to growing danger.
“they just don’t care about the impact because they believe their power is unassailable.” neo
They don’t care because they believe five precepts to be factually true.
1) Their ‘moral’ precepts are the only permissable ones to hold.
2) Anyone who somewhat disagrees is at best gravely mistaken but may be able to be persuaded to see the light.
3) Anyone whose moral precepts are incompatible with the left’s and who therefore opposes the left’s agenda… is evil.
4) Trump is an existential danger because he provides a figure for 66% of the public, i.e. the deplorables and formerly asleep to rally behind. If Trump disappears, De Santis will become the preeminent existential threat.
5) Given their control of the institutions, their power is unassailable.
That is, as long as the military doesn’t revolt. Which is what the purge of the military’s upper echelons under Obama was about.
Trump did nothing to correct that purge.
We can only hope that the Deep State, which clearly exists, follows Ahah-like into disappearance.
Like Captain Ahab, they have induced, madly encouraged, elevated and now fetishized their HATE as the epitome of MORALITY. (Their morality, it must be said.)
The only thing we don’t yet know is if, as in the story, this sheer, maniacal hatred will lead to their own destruction (or the country’s—it certainly seems to be going in that direction).
It has up until now destroyed others and if allowed to continue it will destroy many more.
But will this almost paganic fetishization of hatred—this oh-so-useful tool of the regime—end up destroying them?
– – – – – –
As for the “President” not being briefed, it’s possible that Biden’s lying (more than possible, actually); but it’s also possible that he wasn’t in the loop, just as I don’t believe he’s in the loop for a lot of things.
He just has to “clean up” afterwards…and then his press secretary has to “clean up” after him.
IOW, “Biden”—the Democratic Party Politburo—rules, not Biden….
On Garland’s statement that he approved this charade, Mollie Hemingway says, “Kind of crazy to think that Merrick Garland may have posed less of a threat to the republic as a Supreme Court justice than as an incompetent, vindictive, corrupt AG.”
https://twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/1557811278084616192?s=20&t=Ih9OQB05Fr_QmpcZCDCVXA
I’ve put up a post on Garland’s statement today.
Sundance at Conservative Tree House has a three part series on how The Intelligence Branch became a separate branch of government, answering to no one, and working sometimes to their own ends (though ultimately to the agenda of the “progressives”).
“…I (Sundance) am going to explain how the Intelligence Branch works: (1) to control every other branch of government; (2) how it functions as an entirely independent branch of government with no oversight; (3) how and why it was created to be independent from oversight; (4) what is the current mission of the IC Branch, and most importantly (5) who operates it.
The Intelligence Branch is an independent functioning branch of government, it is no longer a subsidiary set of agencies within the Executive Branch as most would think. To understand the Intelligence Branch, we need to drop the elementary school civics class lessons about three coequal branches of government and replace that outlook with the modern system that created itself.”
At this point, I think there are two credible explanations of why MAL was raided and what the IB was looking for.
The first, proposed by Andy McCarthy is the DOJ was looking for the fatal blow to the President– evidence that links him in any way to the events of J6. The goal– convict Trump of a violation listed in section 3 of the 14th amendment.
But it likely has to be a 14th amendment violation, and even that isn’t a certainty. The President could be re-elected even if he were in prison– though that seems like a stretch.
The second explanation is the other possibility, the fbi was looking for de-classified documents relating to the Intelligence Branch efforts to indict the President as a Russian agent.
On October 6, 2020, President Trump tweeted, “I have fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No redactions!”
The Intelligence Branch ignored him.
It’s possible the fbi raided MAL to retrieve those Crossfire Hurricane documents, that have never been released.
On January 19, 2021, before leaving office, President Trump issued a directive that all material in the Crossfire Hurricane binder be released, allowing for redactions insisted on by the DOJ on January 17.
There’s another piece to this. On January 20 new President Biden returned all the Crossfire Hurricane documents to the DOJ, so they could be redacted per the Privacy Act, even though the Office of Legal Counsel had issued a finding that the White House was not subject to the Privacy Act including any documents released by them.
To this date, the documents have not been released, despite protests by Senators Grassley and Johnson.
Is it possible the boxes confiscated by the fbi from MAL were documents pertaining to Crossfire Hurricane?
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/08/11/part-1-why-did-the-doj-and-fbi-execute-the-raid-on-trump-the-story-behind-the-documents/#more-236386
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/memorandum-declassification-certain-materials-related-fbis-crossfire-hurricane-investigation/
Mollie Hemingway says, “Kind of crazy to think that Merrick Garland may have posed less of a threat to the republic as a Supreme Court justice than as an incompetent, vindictive, corrupt AG.”
Attorneys-General last about three years in the job on average, and only four in the last four generations have held the job for longer than five years. (They all worked for Democrats, natch). Federal judges last bout about 18 years on average. I’m pleased he’s off the bench. The problem is guild self-regulation. He’ll never be disbarred, and that’s what he deserves.
I am hiding documents all over the place. And, I did a good job, I cannot find anything…
JDK: Thanks for the laugh- I can totally relate. It makes me smile when I think of the fbi raiding my place; it would take way longer than 9 hours to go through or box up. 😉
Part of President Trumps memorandum dated January 19 says “I have determined to accept the redactions proposed for continued classification by the FBI in that January 17 submission.
I hereby declassify the remaining materials in the binder.”
Suppose the documents at MAL were Crossfire Hurricane documents. They would have to pre-date his acceptance of the redactions insisted by the FBI, so wouldn’t these documents declassified by the President also contain still classified information?
This creates a dilemma for the President. If copies of these documents are ever released, would he have broken the law?
We may never know the details of how lawless the Intelligence Branch has become.
We don’t need to know how lawless, that it has been established beyond dispute that they have taken lawlessness beyond reform is all we need to know.
When Victor Davis Hanson makes that serious an assertion, we are well past the point of debate.
The new ” Untouchables” are only because they are the Deep State, backed by Democrat/ Marxists and covered up by the Democrats Propaganda Ministry
Great post and comments neo.
Among all the other things; you know it is political because they are openly claiming it is about mishandling classified information. They want to “lock him up” and laugh at doing what he claimed he would do. It’s not J6. It’s not “we found the Russian Collusion smoking gun”. It is “he mishandled classified data” which is impossible for a President to do. It’s equally dumb an excuse as claiming the tip came from a planted spy in Trump’s team. These are more banana republic than the raid alone.
Journalists who have been calling what happened a “raid” for most of the week are now calling it a “search” and saying that it was called a “raid” by pouncing Republicans, even though you can find the same journalists calling it a raid in print and audio.
The idea that the FBI wanted to keep the whole thing on the downlow is ridiculous. Everybody has a camera nowadays. If people see a long line of official vehicles heading somewhere reporters are going to ask questions and the story will be in the news.
I doubt the spy story. This National Archives story has been simmering since at least February. Obama and Nixon each took documents out of the White House when they left office. Both delayed returning them. There’s also speculation — I don’t know how true it is — that the Obama administration or his post-presidential team destroyed documents. But it’s Trump that the FBI goes after.
We all knew that Trump was smarter than the average bear but this is frigging Einstein level! The Feds were told a tale of a jar of honey in Melania’s undies and a pot of gold in Donald’s safe. And they bought it – hook, line, and sinker. Oh frabulous joyness.
Roy. Good possibility. The alternative, as has been said elsewhere likely by me, is that if somebody’d called and said there were a bunch of teenage girl gymnasts being molested, they’d have been left alone forever.
Put up or shut up
https://mobile.twitter.com/pnjaban/status/1557811206651400192
Dubious sourcing
https://mobile.twitter.com/Heminator/status/1557882493503684608
We will probably never know the truth, given the number of professional liars involved in covering their own asses. But it doesn’t matter.
The FBI has engaged in unforgiveable conduct and must now be destroyed.
They know what they’ve done, and know that their destruction is warranted. So they will become more overt in their efforts to hold onto power, as the only defense against their own doom.
You should hope for civil war now, because the alternative is living as a slave in your own country.
Over at TriggerFinger, he hypothesizes that what the raid was after is the documentation of exactly who in the Deep State attempted to do what to attack and discredit Trump, and could not because there was nothing in Trump’s past that offered Secret Leverage, and the fear that, someday, all those documents will be publicly and widely distributed.
That’s as plausible as anything else. What’s not plausible that this was anything but a politically desperate maneuver by deeply frightened people. Whatever it is that they’re so frightened about should be of substantial concern.
He has the Crossfire Hurricane files which he declassified by the government didn’t.
The Woke Left crazies are laughing at us. This is every bit as blatant as throwing Republicans out of the counting rooms on election night. In a sane world, every honest person would be appalled that one side would exclude the other, “count” the votes, and announce that they won with a massive number of new votes at the last minute.
Democrats are corrupt and criminal. About everything. Always have been. The only difference now is that they know the corrupt liars in the news media and Big Tech are working with them to provide covering censorship and propaganda. They are emboldened to be blatant and obnoxious in rubbing their criminality in our faces.
This reminds of the blatant criminality of LBJ’s theft of his Tx senate seat in 1948. He didn’t even pretend otherwise. He just bribed a majority of the members of the state party committee to approve his theft. JFK’s theft of Illinois and Texas in 1960 to steal the presidency was nearly as blatant.
Or the attempt by the criminal Democrat machine which ran McMinn County in Tennessee before the GIs, freshly returned from fighting for freedom around the world, decided they were willing to have a shooting war to insure a fair election at home. See Battle of Athens in 1946. The corrupt machine had the sheriff and deputies seize all the ballot boxes, held the opponent observers in another room by gunpoint, and “counted” the votes. Exactly what we saw in Detroit and other places in 2020 where police repeatedly broke the law when they ejected GOP observers from the room.
Isn’t it remarkable that the Democrats can use force to ensure that they can steal elections and there isn’t even a ripple of objection from supposedly decent people. Let’s face it. Democrat voters know that the GOP observers were thrown out. If the roles were reversed, these people would be apoplectic. Since their side did it, however, they don’t care. Their disinterest pushes the nation closer to violence every day. Again, they don’t care. Why? Because they are evil.
Without the approval of nice, upper class and upper middle class liberals, this corruption and criminality could not happen. Their immoral approval is key. The political class is corrupt, always. As should be expected. Power corrupts. The pushback has to come from the voters. Liberal voters see the criminality. They just don’t care. And their approval will be what causes the inevitable violence. Evil.
I tend to agree with stan above. This is blatant and obvious. I suspect that Trump knew about all this and decided to have it out. If they try to charge him with the records act (a misdemeanor) He will disclose the records of “Crossfire Hurricane,” which have no doubt been copied, and show that the records seized had nothing to do with “Top Secrets.”
Put this in the wrong place earlier.
David Horowitz. https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/moral-dimension-crisis-we-face-david-horowitz/#commento
“The root cause of the American crisis is the moral depravity of the ‘Woke’ progressives.”
“we face is a sinister force that poses an existential threat to our way of life”
Just prior to the Civil War, a very small minority of southeners were slave owners. When the southern elite voted to secede… what would have happened if all of the non-slave owning southeners had said… nope. “I’m not going to fight and risk being crippled or even dying to preserve the wealthy’s immoral, evil gravy train.”
Then as now, tyranny rests upon the support of those who least benefit.
GB. See Chandra Manning. “What This Cruel War Was Over”. She examined troops’ letters, north and south, and found more concern–defined various ways–about slavery than she’d expected.
Among other things, while the male head of household owned the slaves, the rest of the household down to the kids, along with guests and white employees, all had some version of the master attitude and were loath to give it up. Those not owning slaves may have aspired to the ownership, either through a couple of good harvests getting ahead, or inheriting from an uncle. Or there may have been the need to rent a few for a project from a neighbor or relative.
And it was hard to get much lower than a hill farmer exiled from the good bottom land by the elites and trying to make a living on the stony hills of the Appalachians or Blue Ridge or Smokies or….. Even if you could afford a plow you couldn’t use it because you couldn’t afford a draft horse and the soil was too shallow anyway.
So you needed somebody to feel superior to….
There was more to it than simply counting the legal owners.
She may get over her skis pshrinking some of the attitudes, but there’s some truth in it, looking at the historical record.
@ Richard Aubrey > “So you needed somebody to feel superior to…”
I have in the back of my head the punchline from an old science fiction story (by Fredric Brown IIRC) of the time the Martians landed on earth, and the reporters assigned to cover the story were sitting around a bar drinking (nothing new there) and cracking jokes about The Little Green Men, all recognizable to readers back in the day (1940s) as commonly told about the usual ethnic targets (you can fill in the blanks, but most were racial in nature), but now about the aliens instead.
As I recall the ending, the bar is closing up and the janitor, a black man, is cleaning the floor, when one of the newshounds, who had been somewhat disgusted at the joking, complains about the slurs against the aliens and the apparent lack of interest in any deeper consideration of their arrival, and asks rhetorically, “What does it matter anyway?”
The janitor, who had been listening to the jokers transfer their bigoted scorn to new targets, replies, “Gonna matter a lot to some of us, boss.”
People weren’t as un-woke in the past as the Leftists claim.