FBI’s Mar-A-Lago Raid Backlash Continues To Build
A Special Master Will Likely Have To Sort It All Out
If they really are planning to go through with indicting Donald J. Trump for an invented noncrime, I don’t think they can do that until the national spotlight is off their sham investigation.
At this point, after two fake impeachments, the RussiaGate hoax, the January 6 hoax, and 6 years of relentless Fake News orange journalism has utterly failed to rid the Deep State of Donald Trump and his growing base of support. No matter what they do, Trump just keeps getting stronger and more popular. They are growing exceedingly desperate to stop what they see building for the 2022 midterms and beyond to the 2024 Presidential election.
If a Special Master is indeed appointed by U.S. Federal Judge Aileen Cannon, that spotlight won’t come off the DOJ’s Trump probe for some time. While all of the Trump investigation’s dirty laundry is being aired in real-time news coverage, it’s hard to see how they find the nerve to charge up the hill and plant the flag of a Trump indictment and declare any kind of victory.
Can they get the spotlight off of themselves before the midterm elections? I don’t really see how.
This Trump Investigation Has Already Gone Off The Rails - But Can They Still Salvage Something From It?
They just had to very publicly walk Timothy Thibault, the Special Agent In Charge leading their Trump investigation, out the door into retirement.
What exactly happened remains unclear. Initial reports varied from claims that Thibault had been fired to merely being ‘reassigned’. Finally a new narrative took shape.
Thibault and his lawyers claim this is just a long planned retirement, nothing to see here. Oh sure, he’s under investigation by the Office of the Special Counsel, but Thibault expects to be totally vindicated when that investigation concludes. Likely sometime in 2025.
We’re expected to believe that the top agent leading the Deep State charge to take down Donald Trump just serenely moves on into retirement without that Orange Man Bad’s scalp firmly attached to his belt? He gave up his shot at history to spend more time with his family? I don’t buy it.
It should be noted that Garland and Wray’s having the Bureau bid adieu to Thibault corresponded very closely to the announcement by Judge Cannon that she is very likely going to grant Trump’s request for a Special Master review of the Mar-A-Lago raid. Thibault’s taking his supposedly long-planned retirement right at this key moment of a highly-charge politicized investigation he was leading smacks of ass-covering.
A Search Warrant Is Not A Blank Check No Matter What Some People Tell You
It’s already been admitted by the raid team that they far exceeded the scope of the search warrant, and took items that were either not on it or in areas not designated by the warrant.
As has been extensively reported, the raid team went rifling through former First Lady Melania Trump’s closet as part of their search. It’s hard to believe that Melania’s dresses and shoes were part of the warrant’s scope.
Trump could very well get a Special Master to agree anything taken not in a specific area cited in the warrant would be illegally seized contraband and inadmissible in any criminal or civil court case the DOJ might decide to pursue against him.
You don’t get to pretend the 4th Amendment doesn’t exist just because you say you’re investigating a citizen for a crime. That’s not how the Constitution works. That’s why we have courts with judges and search warrants that have to be followed to the letter. And we already know this raid group far exceeded the scope of the warrant that was granted. And if he has the CCTV security footage, Trump can provide evidence of this in court.
If the raid agents were indeed on a fishing expedition - as many suspect they were - the Special Master would compare the scope of the search warrant signed by Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhard with the property list of the items taken in the raid while forcing the government to account for the location of each and every one of the seized items.
Where each item was found by the raid team is going to be very important to know. And if the agents can’t or won’t say where on the premises of Mar-A-Lago an item was taken from, it will have no provenance. It would be inadmissible in court.
And this is where Trump having CCTV footage of the raid itself could come into play.
For instance, the exact location of each and every one of the attorney/client privileged documents seized by the FBI’s raid team is going to have to be established. Trump’s CCTV videos would help establish the precise location of such documents during the raid and show exactly where the agents found them.
Where did they find Trump’s passports? Was the storage location of the passports that were seized within the scope of the search warrant?
What did the raid team think they were going to find inside Trump’s office safe?
These are the questions the Special Master would be brought in to resolve between the competing parties. The FBI raid team will insist it did nothing wrong and had good reason to take whatever items it took. Trump and his lawyers will insist the raid itself was unnecessary and the raid team far exceeded the legal scope of the warrant it had.
Counting against the DOJ’s argument that the appointment of a Special Master to review the conduct of the raid team is unnecessary is the fact we already have public admissions that the team exceeded the scope of the search warrant.
This whole thing is a travesty, anyway. As we all know, Trump has repeatedly asserted every document stored at MAL was declassified already.
If Any Documents Are Really Are Classified, They’ve Been Seen & Handled By Unauthorized FBI Agents
Assuming the DOJ/FBI’s argument is true, that there were very highly classified documents stored at MAL, then the FBI agents that visited MAL and looked through the 15 boxes of documents in May and June got a good look at each of these supposedly highly classified documents. Remember: the affidavit gives a very specific count of each kind of classified document that the agents found in their search through the boxes.
Unless these agents who visited MAL in May and June and then participated in the raid all have the highest security clearances, then you have people not authorized to view classified documents handling them and counting them.
If they really thought this stuff was still classified under the TS/SCI system, they’d have **taken the boxes without opening them**. But they didn’t do that, did they?
The fact they opened these boxes up in the May and June visits, then opened them up again during the raid and spread them all out over the floor to take pictures of them reveals the raid team already knew nothing in the boxes was still TS/SCI.
And if the agents knew nothing in those boxes was still classified, whatever markings they bore, then this whole thing is a political show.
Or something far worse.
The “Grab Declassified Documents From Trump & Try To Reclassify Them” Theory
There’s a developing theory that Trump had declassified RussiaGate-related documents that certain current and former FBI/DOJ people are desperate to ensure never sees the light of day.
There is a report from investigative journalist Paul Sperry of Real Clear Investigations that in May of 2017, under the direction of then Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Crossfire Hurricane team leader Peter Strzok opened a counterintelligence investigation of the sitting President: Donald J. Trump.
If so, that explosive and historic RussiaGate development would have been successfully kept under a rock for more than five years. Why it would only be emerging now is a very legitimate question. If the report is accurate.
The only way I could see that not leaking if it were real would be if it was under Durham’s control, because Durham and his team don’t leak anything.
Did Trump have the declassified document opening up an FBI counterintelligence operation targeting him while he was President among the items stored in those 15 boxes?
Were current and former FBI/DOJ personnel behind this raid because they are desperate to get their hands on certain documents, to seize them back and try to ‘reclassify’ them? Perhaps to prevent Donald J. Trump from making them public? Maybe using them in his civil case in Florida? Or giving them to John Durham? Or both?
That’s just one theory currently running hither and yon across the fruited plain.
The “Plant Fake Evidence & Then Find It” Theory
Another theory says that the main purpose of the MAL raid was to plant some kind of incriminating evidence that the agents would then ‘find’ and use to indict Trump of a crime. If that was what they were up to, it makes sense that they would demand the MAL security cameras be turned off. And the fact that demand was denied and the cameras stayed on may have prevented any planned shenanigans on the part of the raid team.
Donald Trump and his son Eric have made public statements about how the entire raid of MAL was recorded by the security cameras; should those recordings be produced by the Trumps that might very well cause some serious problems with a raid team that keeps changing the story about why they executed this raid and what exactly it was they were looking for.
Has Anything Gone Right For DOJ/FBI Since The Raid?
From what I’ve observed ever since this raid went down on August 18, absolutely **nothing** seems to have gone the way the raid planners intended. It certainly does appear that the DOJ and the FBI have been forced to do things they didn’t plan for or anticipate.
Early on there was a narrative that the DOJ was actually eager to unseal the MAL search warrant and property list in response to polite requests from the federal court, and then the affidavit because the judge asked nicely, because this activity was assumed to be part of their ‘Get Trump’ strategy.
It’s hard to agree with this viewpoint now, as the backlash engendered by the raid continues to build and rumors swirl of more whistleblowers coming forward from within the FBI. Rumors of multiple FBI whistleblowers going to Congress led to another fascinating development in this developing scandal.
Attorney General Merrick Garland Orders DOJ Personnel To Zip Their Lips
Merrick Garland recently made the absurd proclamation to DOJ personnel that whistleblowers within his agency are not allowed, and he doesn’t want anyone going to Congress and talking about political bias and other issues with people like Senators Charles Grassley or Ron Johnson.
That decree from Garland runs afoul of every single whistleblower protection statute on the books. And he knows this. It’s unenforceable. But as my friend Adam Taylor of The Washington Pundit recently told me, the fact Garland felt he had to come out and mumble something to try to stop whistleblowers from going to Congress shows a loss of control and a turning of the tide.
It’s too late for Garland to stop anything that’s coming.
As this story develops, a lot of things are going to hopefully become clearer as to what actually happened. We may not get all the answers we want in the coming weeks, but we’ll get a clearer picture.
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It seems the three letter agencies have snookered themselves. Why, why, why, would you put that picture in a court doc? That motivation lends itself to Kayfabe as laid out by Just Human. Great article Brian, I love your insight...you fill in the nuances I never get.
Superb analysis, Brian.