Donald Trump's Florida Home Raided by FBI

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Kenr
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Re: Donald Trump's Florida Home Raided by FBI

Post by Kenr »

bong.kuit wrote: Tue Aug 16, 2022 2:48 am Seems he got the parties mixed up.

https://www.michiganradio.org/politics- ... k-warrants
Yeah, don’t think any judge is signing 50-60 no-knock warrants a day, and definitely not just because they are registered Republicans. Seems kind of far fetched.
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Re: Donald Trump's Florida Home Raided by FBI

Post by TWY »

I hope the DOJ clearly shares what was so dangerous to national security that it necessitated raiding a former president's home.
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From what they're saying a few of the documents are so classified they can't even be read outside of a special room, much less openly talked about. I doubt they'll be getting into specifics there.

As far as raiding Trump's home goes ... he had highly classified documents that didn't belong to him and he's a known a security risk. He was asked to return them,then he was subpeonaed and still didn't return them. He (via his lawyer) was caught lying about having them and he has been changing his story since it started, the guy is quite obviously not acting in good faith here.

I don't see how they were left with any option other than to go and take them back, allowing Trump to keep them isn't an option. Now he's bitching and whining about the situation HE brought about. HE took documents that don't belong to him, HE put the people in charge of safeguarding national secrets in the difficult position where they had to either physically take the docs back or allow them to remain a huge security risk.

Trump caused this situation. He brought the raid on himself. He isn't a victim here but he's playing the victim, claiming it's politically motivated to presumably deflect from the fact that has been caught red handed breaking the law, ironically the same law he changed to include harsher penalties for breaking. Apparantly that law only applies to other people while you're chanting 'lock her up' though.
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I think your giving Trump too much credit here. I highly doubt that he went through files determining what papers to take from the White House. Perhaps there was a meeting where someone went through a list of different events/themes and said do you want records of xyz and he said yes. Even then I'd assume there were lawyers present and doing the bureaucratic things required from the National Archives perspective.

The Justice Department made a big deal of releasing the warrant. But today they are pressing to seal the affidavit that got them the warrant. Claiming that this could interfere with their prosecution efforts - given that they have the documents they desired - that is a joke. So that makes little sense.

The one specific piece of information that was released was that one of the items taken was a letter related to Roger Stone's clemency. That is hardly a national security threat, nor of any interest to anyone other than perhaps Roger Stone. There was some vague reference to papers with information about the president of France and "nuclear papers".

We just have to wait to see what it is they actually have taken. I saw an article yesterday of the SHOCKING number of people that have top secret clearance. Well its not shocking. When you make almost every document the government produces as some level of classified - more and more people need higher levels of clearance just to do basic tasks. And the references you've heard about secure rooms mainly refers to people like Congressmen and women and their staffers who are allowed to read but not to take various documents from agencies they oversee. So things like intelligence reports, security briefings for the President, etc. Are there some super duper truly top secret documents - absolutely. But they are few and far between. Much of the rest is just bureaucratic nonsense.

The Justice Department needs to release the affidavit and some details on what documents were seized and why they are dangerous. And vague references to "nuclear papers" doesn't cut it. Then they need to compare these documents to documents taken by Bush and Obama and be able to articulate what clear difference exists between the documents Trump took and the previous presidents took.

Time will tell.
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Re: Donald Trump's Florida Home Raided by FBI

Post by TWY »

I found the article on security clearance. Just to put things in perspective.

The most recent data the reporter could find was from 2017:

2.8 MILLION people have security clearance
1.6 MILLION people have Confidential or Secret information clearance

And.....

1.2 MILLION people have TOP SECRET information clearance

This is why I think its very important for the DOJ to be incredibly specific about what danger is being posed by these documents. Its easy in a news report to make alarming claims of Top Secret documents running loose. But in reality Top Secret doesn't mean what it might mean in a James Bond movie. The majority of it is actually a lot of everyday mundane stuff - seen by a lot of everyday mundane bureaucrats.

There is a subset of Top Secret documents known as Top Secret SCI that is supposedly only viewed by a subset of Top Secret approved officials/bureaucrats.

So before you believe that Trump is somehow running around with nuclear codes or secret war plans, just realize that its also possible he's got boxes of letters from his buddy Kim and some dinner menus from his visit to France. All classified as Top Secret.
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Re: Donald Trump's Florida Home Raided by FBI

Post by Random Dude »

TWY wrote: Tue Aug 16, 2022 5:09 pm I found the article on security clearance. Just to put things in perspective.

The most recent data the reporter could find was from 2017:

2.8 MILLION people have security clearance
1.6 MILLION people have Confidential or Secret information clearance

And.....

1.2 MILLION people have TOP SECRET information clearance

This is why I think its very important for the DOJ to be incredibly specific about what danger is being posed by these documents. Its easy in a news report to make alarming claims of Top Secret documents running loose. But in reality Top Secret doesn't mean what it might mean in a James Bond movie. The majority of it is actually a lot of everyday mundane stuff - seen by a lot of everyday mundane bureaucrats.

There is a subset of Top Secret documents known as Top Secret SCI that is supposedly only viewed by a subset of Top Secret approved officials/bureaucrats.

So before you believe that Trump is somehow running around with nuclear codes or secret war plans, just realize that its also possible he's got boxes of letters from his buddy Kim and some dinner menus from his visit to France. All classified as Top Secret.
They took boxes of stuff from Trump, a lot of documents. Yes, most of it was probably souvenirs like you said, dinner menus,a letter from KJU etc... but included in those boxes were documents the government deemed to be top secret, the highest classification level. I don't think anyone is suggesting that everything there was top secret, it's the top secret documents he did have though which is freaking them out. Just the act of removing them is a very serious crime.

1.2 million people have TOP SECRET clearance... I'm sure you're right. And I'm just as sure that if any one of them took those top secret docs home with them the FBI would freak out, the docs would be taken back and whoever took them would most likely face some serious charges.
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Re: Donald Trump's Florida Home Raided by FBI

Post by Kammekor »

TWY wrote: Tue Aug 16, 2022 5:09 pm I found the article on security clearance. Just to put things in perspective.

The most recent data the reporter could find was from 2017:

2.8 MILLION people have security clearance
1.6 MILLION people have Confidential or Secret information clearance

And.....

1.2 MILLION people have TOP SECRET information clearance

This is why I think its very important for the DOJ to be incredibly specific about what danger is being posed by these documents. Its easy in a news report to make alarming claims of Top Secret documents running loose. But in reality Top Secret doesn't mean what it might mean in a James Bond movie. The majority of it is actually a lot of everyday mundane stuff - seen by a lot of everyday mundane bureaucrats.

There is a subset of Top Secret documents known as Top Secret SCI that is supposedly only viewed by a subset of Top Secret approved officials/bureaucrats.

So before you believe that Trump is somehow running around with nuclear codes or secret war plans, just realize that its also possible he's got boxes of letters from his buddy Kim and some dinner menus from his visit to France. All classified as Top Secret.
Trump took the documents home, maybe, just maybe, unaware he broke the law doing so.
Then he was informed that if he did, he broke the law. They requested him, very low key, to return the items. Trump then denied, and thus lied, he had any, and his lawyer signed a declaration all had been turned over.
The FBI apparently had serious grounds to suspect Trump was lying and they were granted permission to take a look. Their suspicion was right, Trump, or team Trump, had mistakenly promised the full return, or lied about it.
So now Trump can just say ''sorry, I made a mistake' and get on with his life, but guess what? Trump's bigger than the law and he's playing victim card after victim card. It's really pathetic.
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Re: Donald Trump's Florida Home Raided by FBI

Post by TWY »

They took boxes of stuff from Trump, a lot of documents. Yes, most of it was probably souvenirs like you said, dinner menus,a letter from KJU etc... but included in those boxes were documents the government deemed to be top secret, the highest classification level. I don't think anyone is suggesting that everything there was top secret, it's the top secret documents he did have though which is freaking them out. Just the act of removing them is a very serious crime.

1.2 million people have TOP SECRET clearance... I'm sure you're right. And I'm just as sure that if any one of them took those top secret docs home with them the FBI would freak out, the docs would be taken back and whoever took them would most likely face some serious charges.
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Well, I'm sure the FBI would freak out. And yes, some people have faced charges for mishandling confidential and top secret documents. General Patreus got 2 years probation for giving his notebook which contained the names of undercover operatives, various passwords, and other information to his mistress. I think the charges included that he then lied about it - but I'm not sure.

There was a gentleman that worked somewhere in Maryland that they caught basically hording documents at his home. I don't recall the specifics of the case - he wasn't doing anything with them - just some sort of strange fascination. I think he did it for a large number of years and served some jail time.

Unless there is some espionage involved or a high profile person we don't hear much about the handling of documents. Usually, people get reprimanded for the mundane stuff and if it happens again lose their clearance (and thus their jobs).

Lets just wait and see what was actually taken. The DOJ/FBI didn't exactly cover themselves in glory with the Russian collusion investigation. And I hope this wasn't done as a cover to seize documents related to the January 6th riot at the capital (which is what I suspect is really the driving force). But we won't know until they tell us what was seized.
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Re: Donald Trump's Florida Home Raided by FBI

Post by TWY »

Trump took the documents home, maybe, just maybe, unaware he broke the law doing so.
Then he was informed that if he did, he broke the law. They requested him, very low key, to return the items. Trump then denied, and thus lied, he had any, and his lawyer signed a declaration all had been turned over.
The FBI apparently had serious grounds to suspect Trump was lying and they were granted permission to take a look. Their suspicion was right, Trump, or team Trump, had mistakenly promised the full return, or lied about it.
So now Trump can just say ''sorry, I made a mistake' and get on with his life, but guess what? Trump's bigger than the law and he's playing victim card after victim card. It's really pathetic.
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How do you know its pathetic? From what has been reported in the news, documents were requested by the DOJ and returned. Then, later some type of other request was made. Trump's lawyer signed some sort of document saying whatever type of information they were requesting was all returned. I doubt his lawyer did that lightly.

We are a long time since Trump left office. Has it really taken 18 months for the DOJ to finally go after something that is TRULY a national security threat? I doubt it.

As an American, I hope there is some meat on the bones so to speak. But I suspect this is going to tie into January 6th and there will be a forever argument that these documents actually relate to activity and actions on and prior to Jan 6th. If that is the case, then I'm really concerned about the long term implications of this search.

In this particular case, dealing with an ex-president, the particulars of a prosecution are not relevant. DOJ should release the affidavit and specific information about each document seized. They should then sit down with leaders of Congress and review/share the exact documents taken. If Trump has nuclear codes or secret battle plans or a list of all the CIA's undercover agents - then throw the book at him. But if this is somehow just more of the same we saw during the Russia collusion nonsense, then its time to clean out the upper management of the DOJ.
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Re: Donald Trump's Florida Home Raided by FBI

Post by TWY »

NY Times is reporting that there was a meeting on June 3rd between Trump Lawyers and the DOJ, including "counter intelligence officials". The counter intelligence officials went through the papers and took material they were concerned about.

So this is as clear as mud at this point.

Why would the DOJ not take whatever it is they subsequently took during the raid?

Are there lawyerly disagreements going on over what has been declassified and what hasn't been declassified - or similarly disagreements about what falls under attorney/client privilege and what does not?

Assuming this NY Times report is correct, either the DOJ believes the Trump folks were hiding material from them, or there are lawyers arguing about technicalities, or the DOJ decided other material already reviewed also needed to be returned (but why a raid was necessary is really baffling).

The DOJ needs to come out and clarify all this IMMEDIATELY. This kind of drip drip drip of information is just further eroding any confidence in the DOJ. They already today issued one of those "technical" denials of something that turned out to be true. Trump said the DOJ seized his passports. The DOJ issues a release saying they don't have Trump's passports. But the truth is that they did seize his passports and prior to issuing their press release arranged to return his passports. So why the heck don't you just tell folks the truth?

I would hope members of Congress - specifically those that oversee the DOJ - begin to demand answers from the DOJ as to what exactly is going on.
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Re: Donald Trump's Florida Home Raided by FBI

Post by John Bingham »

He does know that four presidents were assassinated and at least two more (that I remember) were almost assassinated, right?

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Re: Donald Trump's Florida Home Raided by FBI

Post by TWY »

John Bingham wrote: Wed Aug 17, 2022 11:04 am He does know that four presidents were assassinated and at least two more (that I remember) were almost assassinated, right?

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He probably knows Lincoln.... I hope :)
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