“AFFIDAVIT IN SUPPORT OF AN APPLICATION UNDER RULE 41 FOR A WARRANT TO SEARCH AND SEIZE “

From WaPo [link added 2pm]:

An FBI affidavit filed prior to the search of former president Donald Trump’s home says agents reviewed 184 classified documents that were kept at the Florida property after he left the White House — including several with Trump’s apparent handwriting on them…

Here’s the redacted affidavit. [link]

 

89 thoughts on ““AFFIDAVIT IN SUPPORT OF AN APPLICATION UNDER RULE 41 FOR A WARRANT TO SEARCH AND SEIZE “

    1. AndrewG

      That’s what the ABC legal analysts were all saying (somewhat incoherently, but clearly enough) the other day. The judge’s and DOJ’s actions reminded them of a mob case.

      1. Moses Herzog

        @ AndrewG
        Bill Maher made a joke, he said, playing as donald trump”
        “If my hands touched it it’s mine forever, if my d*ck touched it I was never there.”

        I’d say, as far as the orange abomination goes, that nailed it.

        1. pgl

          Stormy Daniels should know. The DONALD’s is about 3 inches long. So it might as well as never been there.

  1. pgl

    “agents reviewed 184 classified documents that were kept at the Florida property after he left the White House — including several with Trump’s apparent handwriting on them”

    He used that infamous sharpie to alter classified documents? Was he following instructions from his boss – Putin?

  2. pgl

    Few redactions for the first pages but after that – mostly redactions. Oh well there is some fun readings on how utterly corrupt Trump is.

  3. pgl

    I may never travel to Texas again:

    https://jabberwocking.com/texas-judge-rules-texas-gun-laws-are-too-damn-liberal/

    Kevin Drum reads a decision from a Texas Court and writes:

    Texas judge rules Texas gun laws are too damn liberal…Even the lunatics who run Texas didn’t want teens carrying handguns around, but a Texas court told them that this was too damn sensible. There was just no good reason not to let teenagers pack all the heat they want.

    He links to this:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/26/texas-handgun-young-adults-judge/

    A federal judge in Texas on Thursday struck down a state law barring adults under 21 from carrying handguns, ruling that the age limit violated the Second Amendment. U.S. District Judge Mark T. Pittman said the Constitution didn’t put an age restriction on the right to bear arms, meaning adults 18 to 20 shouldn’t be prevented from carrying handguns outside the home.

    But wait – this originalist nonsense would allow 3 year olds to carry handguns since the Second Amendment has no age restriction. This judge is a dangerous nut case.

  4. Macroduck

    Those found guilty of violating 18 U.S.C. § 793 “Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.”

    Worth noting, 18 U.S.C. § 793 has a conspiracy clause, so anyone who knowingly took part in violation of this law could also do ten years.

    Obstruction of justice carries its own penalties. I believe there is a conspiracy clause for obstruction, as well.

    1. pgl

      18 U.S. Code § 793 – Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information

      Pardon me as I am not an attorney but I do not think this is the same as the Presidential Records Act. I inquire about this because Trump’s new defense attorney – Rick Striker – is telling everyone that all Trump was ever accused of was violating the Presential Records Act.

    1. AndrewG

      If it hurts your feelings, CoRev, it’s “fake news.” And by that measure, this is the “fakest” news in years.

      But don’t worry, all the news outlets you trust won’t cover this thoroughly. They’re in the business of not hurting your feelings.

    2. Macroduck

      Peanut gallery stuff from CoVid. He has nothing substantive to say, but pretends he does.

      So, Covid, what is it you’re pretnding to know? More to the point, what evidence do you want to pretend you have? Faux news talking point?

      1. pgl

        Human intelligence was compromised. Maybe CoRev the traitor does not get the implications of this. Remember when Dick Cheney revealed that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA. CoRev took out a Go Fund page for Scooter Libby.

      2. CoRev

        To the Peanut Gallery, Y’all have responded to my comment, the same day the highly redacted affidavit is released Mark Zuckerberg tells us how that same FBI squashed the Hunter Biden laptop story just before the election.

        You are not just willfully gullible, but reveling in your gullibility. Useful idiots can not come close to describing your actions. Embarrassed, yet about voting for the criminal, Biden? Embarrassed yet with your blind acceptance of the incompetent actions of the Biden administration? Embarrassed yet over what your party has done to the economy? Embarrassed yet by your own blind angry hatred? Embarrassed yet by your desperate ineptness? Embarrassed yet that you are constantly lying, and don’t even recognize when you are lying, ?the Inflation Reduction Act? Embarrassed yet that you can not list a set of SUCCESSFUL Biden policies. Embarrassed yet that you have supported these policy and political figure abject failures? (This list goes on and on.)

        November can not come fast enough.

        1. Noneconomist

          And we’ll never know which highly classified national security documents were on Hunter Biden’s laptop or if he was storing the nuclear codes in a closet next to his shoe rack.

        2. pgl

          Your latest babble couldn’t even made the Tucker Carlson show. Poor little CoRev – trying his best to defend the Traitor and Chief but coming up short as usual.

        3. Barkley Rosser

          CoRev,

          Problem is that there is nothing to the Hunber Biden laptop story, although if GOP takes House in November we shall have endless hearinga about it like we did about Benghazi. We had 8 successive committees cover that one for millions of dollars. They provided a steady stream of Congresspeople showing up each night on Fox News to explain how they were just on the verge of the great revelation that would allow them to Lock Her Up, but in the end it was a great big nothing, culminating in her 11 hour testimony to that final embarrassingly bad committee. I remember the final hour, someone trying to give her a hard time over not having Amb. Stevens for dinner at her house, there being so nothing at all to the whole thing. But what a show, and T can still get people to make that chant at his more than semi-fascist rallies.

          Oh, right, the big coverup is that Hunter’s laptop really was his and not a Russian hit job. But what is on there? Lots of sex and drugs by him, which I am sure those House committees will love to play over and over and talk about on Fox News But beyond that? Ooooh, he got some money from some foreigners while his dad was VP. But, unlike say Jared Kushner or Ivanka T., Hunter has never been part of either the Biden or Obama admins, and the claims that somehow Papa Biden was getting money from him look to be at best very vague streteches. Sorry, CoRev, this is just not in the same league as top sectet documents whete Russian spies look to have actually gotten at them in Mar-a-Lago, with it now incrreasingly looking like these were the source of major losses of CIA agents in foreign lands, including with many of these people being executed.

        4. AndrewG

          “Embarrassed yet by your own blind angry hatred?”

          You have the emotional intelligence of an 8-year-old. You’re not embarrassed of anything that walking global embarrassment Trump does, not because you can’t admit it, but simply because you’re insufficiently self-aware.

  5. Bruce Hall

    I thought the most interesting part was where it read: ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️
    ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️
    ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️
    ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️
    ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️
    ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️
    ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️
    ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️

    That explained everything.

    1. pgl

      We all know Brucie is incredibly slow. Now for the take of people who actually get it:

      https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/seen-enough-experts-predict-donald-trump-will-be-indicted-after-release-of-pulverizing-affidavit/ar-AA119pAH?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=fe16f9a09048b9044aa416df02b78593

      ‘Seen enough’: Experts predict Donald Trump ‘will be indicted’ after release of ‘pulverizing’ affidavit

      Legal experts are going through the FBI’s redacted affidavit used to obtain the “search and seize” warrant to enter Mar-a-Lago three weeks ago and remove presidential records, including documents classified and the highest levels, believed to have been stored there by Donald Trump. It appears the general consensus from legal experts is this document is damning for the former president, both on the volume of documents he allegedly unlawfully held, and on the nature of the documents: not only classified but classified at some of the highest levels, and so dangerous if they were given to America’s adversaries that, as the affidavit states, “lives can be at risk.” Attorney David Laufman, a former Chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section (CES) in the National Security Division at the Department of Justice (DOJ), called the volume of evidence the FBI and DOJ has “pulverizing” in an appearance Friday on MSNBC, and that Trump should expect to get a target letter.

      As usual Brucie boy cannot bother to READ the unredacted portions but these people did. Trump will be indicted. He would be well advised to hire lawyers who are a LOT brighter than Bruce Hall.

    2. Moses Herzog

      Was your long-distance rifle getting tons of dust on it now??? It’s so sad when extreme right-wing people don’t know who to point their gun at, isn’t it Bruce??

  6. pgl

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/john-ratcliffe-says-nothing-visible-in-affidavit-justified-extreme-mar-a-lago-search/ar-AA119q0b?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=fdc00cad3c3476dd24c3b6755d3cecfa

    John Ratcliffe, the former director of national intelligence under former President Donald Trump, said nothing he saw in the heavily redacted affidavit for the Mar-a-Lago search warrant justified what seemed like an “extreme” approach by the FBI and Justice Department.

    Well that is what a Trump toadie would say. Yea – the good stuff was redacted and a real director of national intelligence would not why.

  7. Rick Stryker

    I haven’t had a chance to look at the heavily redacted affidavit until now.

    What an unbelievable scandal. It doesn’t matter what’s been redacted. Under the statutes and illegal reasoning in the affidavit, the search of Trump’s property was grossly illegal. The DOJ has good lawyers and they must know this. But the DOJ and FBI are completely politicized now, doing the bidding of the Democratic Party, which has become an American Fascist Party.

    The point of this raid was to besmirch the likely Republican presidential candidate and help Democratic candidates in the midterms. If Trump persists, they may well indict him to attempt to knock him out of the race, knowing that their prosecutorial misconduct would be slapped down perhaps only years later by the courts.

    Such hypocrisy too. One of the statutes they used to justify the raid was 18 usc 793, the same act that Hilary Clinton was accused of violating in her email server escapade. Yet no one raided her home. Moreover, Comey asserted that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges” under 793 and the DOJ agreed. Suddenly, in Trump’s case, reasonable prosecutors would bring charges, even though Trump, being President, can’t have violated that act although Clinton as sec of state could have and in fact did violate that act.

    1. Barkley Rosser

      Rick,

      “grossly illegal”? How out of your mind are you?

      The grossly illegal conduct has been by Trump all the way from the moment he left the White House with all those documents, not just the classified ones, every singlu one of them. He has been for 20 months now in gross and obvious violation of the Presidential Records Act, which he himself upgraded to make violating a felony. No other president has ever been even remotely accused of violating it, even back when it was a mere misdemeanor

      Oh, yeah, the money-grubbing Clintons did walk out of the WH with a bunch of silberware and china reportedly. But when this was noticed by the authorities who approached them about it, they promptly returned all of it, or so I have read. Trump actually had the effrontery to bring this matter up at some point in all this.

      So we now know in fact that the National Archives has been after him for the stuff from the minute he left the WH, and he was warned even by the WH attorneys like Cipillone before he left that he should not be taking any of this stuff, again including all the non-classified stuff. He likes to claim that it is his, but it is not and never has been. He has been a blatant thief in open violation of the law.

      National Archives only brought in the DOJ when after Trump finally gave them a portion of the stuff back in January they found all this classified stuff, some of it super highly classified. That brought into play other laws that it looks that Trump has violated, namely the Espionage Act. And we haveall this blatant obstruction and destruction stuff as well, also all blatantly illegal. And you are claiming that it is the DOJ that is behaving illegally? Just how out of your mind are you?

      It is now becoming clear that all this is in fact far worse than the above. We now are learing that especially after Trump left office, US intel has lost inordinate numbers of foreign sources, many of them executed. Maybe none of that was due to Trump having humint materials poorly secured at Mar-a-Lago with at least one known Russian spy visiting several times, the woman posing as a Rothschild heir. But it very well may be. This is just getting worse and worse, as I warned you it would. When are you going to wake un and smell the coffee here that Trump has committed very serious crimes, very possibly causing the deaths of US agents?

      1. Rick Stryker

        Barkley,

        You say

        “He has been for 20 months now in gross and obvious violation of the Presidential Records Act, which he himself upgraded to make violating a felony. No other president has ever been even remotely accused of violating it, even back when it was a mere misdemeanor”

        The Biden Administration is counting on this level of legal ignorance to get away with its illegal actions. As I’ve already pointed out, the PRA has neither civil nor criminal penalties and no enforcement mechanism. And of course previous Presidents have “violated” it. Bill Clinton did so when he had an historian make tapes of him while on the job and then did not turn them over to NARA. Judicial Watch sued to get the records and left wing judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote the controlling opinion on the PRA:

        “The Court will grant the motion to dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b)(1) because plaintiff’s claim is not redressable. NARA does not have the authority to designate materials as “Presidential records,” NARA does not have the tapes in question, and NARA lacks any right, duty, or means to seize control of them. In other words, there has been no showing that a remedy would be available to redress plaintiff’s alleged injury even if the Court agreed with plaintiff’s characterization of the materials. Since plaintiff is completely unable to identify anything the Court could order the agency to do that the agency has any power, much less, a mandatory duty, to do, the case must be dismissed.”

        The DOJ, NARA, and the FBI know about this controlling opinion. NARA has no legal means to demand anything from Trump. That NARA declares something public property does not make it so. Nonetheless, the FBI at the behest of DOJ illegally broke into Trumps house and stole his property.

        I could make similar comments about the rest of the affidavits illegal analysis but this comment is already long enough.

        1. pgl

          Gee – having proven you are incompetent at economics, you have to decided to pretend you are some legal authority? Your babbling here is even more disjointed than that laughable spinning from RUDY G. Ah Rick – you may want to go wash up as your face is covered with some weird brown substance.

        2. pgl

          ‘The PRA has neither civil nor criminal penalties and no enforcement mechanism.’

          You said you read that affidavit? And all you saw was the Presidential Records Act? Excuse me but even Mr. Magoo could see a LOT more than that.

          Gee Ricky boy – I guess you can get a Ph.D. in economics from Pepperdine even if you flunked preK reading!

          1. Rick Stryker

            pg13,

            If you had read the affidavit like I did, you’d realize that the PRA is a critical piece of the argument justifying seizure of anything that looks like it could be a presidential record in the illegal raid on Trumps house.

            But don’t waste your time trying to understand legal issues. You won’t get it. Better for you to read a basic calculus book so you understand what a derivative is.

          2. pgl

            ‘Rick Stryker
            August 28, 2022 at 2:31 pm
            pg13,

            If you had read the affidavit like I did, you’d realize that the PRA is a critical piece of the argument justifying seizure of anything that looks like it could be a presidential record in the illegal raid on Trumps house.’

            Part of the argument is not the same thing as the entire argument. I can see it now – Ricky is defending someone accused of murder and theft. Ricky proves someone us stole the dude’s money after his client murdered the dude and Ricky thinks he had his Perry Mason moment. Yes – Ricky is that dumb!

        3. pgl

          “previous Presidents have “violated” it. Bill Clinton did so when he had an historian make tapes of him while on the job and then did not turn them over to NARA.”

          I’m not a lawyer but you are talking about the PRA of 1978. PRA was amended in 2014. I trust you as the expert on the law are aware of this but what – you cannot bother to mention the differences in the relevant PRA now?

          BTW – even if Bill violated the 1978 PRA – you have made no case that Hillary violated the 2014 PRA.

          Of course the elephant in the room are the other crimes Trump has likely committed which of course a Rudy G. style attorney like you cannot acknowledge.

        4. Barkley Rosser

          Rick,

          Oh my. So for awhile you were accusing the FBI in “leaking” Now with the affidavit out that has become a joke. So now in your desperation you try to drag in items related to the Clintons in an even more ridiculous effort to somehow discredit the FBI search and seizure of presidential records.

          You are right about one thing, and that is about it. Indeed the PRA does not have any enforcement mechanism or punishments for former presidents violating it. But that does not mean it is not a law. NARA is indeed left to requesting or begging former presidents to give them the presidential records that the NARA is supposed to hold. Trump has of course lied that “all they had to do was ask,” when in fact we now know they asked over and over, including starting before he left the White House, with even the WH Coundels, including Cipillone, agreeing that what Trump ended up taking to Mar-a-Lago were presidential records that should go to the NARA and that he should not take them to Mar-a-Lago. But he ignored his own attorneys and took them anyway.

          So, of course you cherry picked that judicial decision about those Clinton tapes. What you did not report here is that the PRA distinguishes presidential records from “personal” records. The former are generated as part of the president’s job and activities. The latter are not and are generated for purely personal reasons. The example is a diary a president would keep. That is personal and can be taken. These tapes made by historian Taylor Branch was claimed by Clinton to be those, personal records, not presidential ones, and the court agreed. There was debate about some that Branch made while Clinton was actually doing things, such as recording his side of a phone call, which do look like sort of in a grey zone. But the court agreed those were private.

          Needless to say, you ignored this point, Rick. Maybe some small portion of what TRump took counted as this, although I have not heard of anyting being taken from Mar-a-Lago being diaries or tapes made by historians, but rather overwhelmingly what indeed are considered to be presidential records. And again, the White House Counsels at the end of his presidency agreed with that and told him he could not take them with him and they should go to the NARA. That the NARA has no enforcement ability does not change that or change that Trump broke the law when he took the stuff, or at lest the vast majority of it.

          So what set the NARA to run to the DOJ? Ah, it was when they found 185=4 classified documents in what Trump gave back to them, some of them Top Secret and above, and realized he was still sitting on more. This then raised other laws that can be enforced and can lead to jail time, the Espionage Act. And, indeed as well, Trump looks to have been engaging in obstruction and destruction of records, this stuff also enforceable, and what was documented in the affidavit and lay behind the warrant and the search, with the lying about all classified documents being turned over in June clearly obstruction. So this goes way beyond anything covered by that Berman ruling, which simply does no apply.

          For Trump to get out of all that he would have needed to actually have declassified all that stuff, which Patel claims he did. But nobody else agrees. He did have the authority to do it while president, but there are procedures for doing so, and there is no evidence he followed those. It looks that none of it was declassified. So he looks guilty guilty guilty of pretty serious crimes.

          And as for comparing this to HIllary Clinton. Like Colin Powell before her she illegally used her private phone for lots of communication, some of it (about a half a percent) involving classified materials. This came about both because the State Dept computer systems were bakward and Hillary herself was technologically backward, never using a desktop computer. The problem with her came to be not her taking home stuff that should have stayed in the office, but deleting a bunch of it. So it is gone, not accessible by anybody, including foreign spies, not sitting in an unsecured basement as has been going on at Mar-a-Lago.

    2. pgl

      The DOJ has good lawyers and they must know this.

      Know what Ricky boy? That you are full of malarky. I did not know a Ph.D. from Pepperdine qualifies you as a Constitutional lawyer too. But the DOJ lawyers would have a good time rifling through your utter BS here. Sorry dude but your legal skills are worse than your pathetic economic skills.

      1. Rick Stryker

        Pg13,

        See my comment above to Barkley. I’m quite knowledgeable about legal matters actually

        1. pgl

          I’m sure you were first in your law class at Wossamotta University! Now if you actually get legal matters – then you have to know how utterly dishonest you are. BTW – are you clerking for Rudy G or what?

          1. pgl

            “So you always say, but you never explain why I’m wrong, do you? Can you?”

            I already have but I can’t overcome your absurd arrogance. Ricky – keep it up as the rest of the gang is laughing at your pompous idiocy.

    3. pgl

      “the same act that Hilary Clinton was accused of violating in her email server escapade.”

      That rightwing canard. None of her emails ever took classified documents and put them out in some resort for Russian and Chinese spies to review. That is one of the many issues which THE RICK wants to gloss over. That you raised the email nothing burger only shows you are not even trying to have nothing more than a guest appearance on Sean Hannity’s show.

      Seriously – could you at least TRY to make a real point? This comment was weak even for you.

      1. Rick Stryker

        Pg13,

        By conducting official business as Secretary of State on a private, unsecured email server, Clinton ensured that Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and countless other states read every email the Secretary of State sent and received, whether classified or not, including emails to and from the President.

        1. pgl

          How many classified documents did she take to her private residence? Come on dude – use your magical calculus skills if you want but the answer is simple – ZERO.

          1. Rick Stryker

            Clinton made sure no one would ever be able find out, since she ordered over 30k emails permanently wiped. However, the FBI found classified items in the emails she did turn over. Since those classified items were on her private server, and her server was in her house, she did keep classified info in her house.

          2. pgl

            Rick Stryker
            August 28, 2022 at 2:38 pm

            Repeating this canard over and over and over again does not make it less absurd.

      2. CoRev

        Bwa ha ha, gullible liberals say thing like: “That rightwing canard. None of her emails ever took classified documents and put them out in some resort for Russian and Chinese spies to review.” ?Really? Is the document storage location at Mar-a-largo more or less secure than the white house?

        And others: ” We now are learing that especially after Trump left office, US intel has lost inordinate numbers of foreign sources, many of them executed. Maybe none of that was due to Trump having humint materials poorly secured at Mar-a-Lago with at least one known Russian spy visiting several times, the woman posing as a Rothschild heir. But it very well may be.” I think he means under the Biden administration agent deaths and turnings have accelerated.
        …The cable may have been top secret, but Langley had to know its gist would leak out. That’s why such cables are “unusual,” even classified to that level. One has to wonder, therefore, why they would risk making this public now as opposed to, oh, a couple of months ago.

        One answer could be that the intelligence community wants to push back against Joe Biden over his retreat from Afghanistan. …” https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2021/10/06/hmmmm-why-are-cia-informants-suddenly-going-missing-n420623

        Incompetence or …? There is a huge amount evidence for incomeptence.

        1. pgl

          Gee – all those trips around the back yard chasing your own tail has lead to your computer firing off the most absurd gibberish ever typed.

        2. pgl

          It was Trump’s decision to cut and run from Afghanistan. And this notion we cannot recruit spies may be particularly acute now that Trump has exposed many of them to the possibility that hot Russian babes hanging out at Maro Lago maybe Putin spies.

          Hey CoRev – we get you THINK you were helping out Donald Traitor Trump but you little link only makes the case against him even worse.

          Unless you and Trump are conspiring with Putin to undermine the United States.

    4. Ivan

      My god your right wing blabber is completely out of control. Now the affidavit doesn’t matter because it has “illegal reasoning”? and the legally court approved search is illegal because you disagree with the arguments you have yet to see?

      Fact is that Trump stole top secret documents and the DOJ had a tremendous patience with him as they asked to get them back. It took more than a year and a half before they finally did what they would have done in 24 hours with anybody else who they had reason to believe illegally possessed top secret documents. And the FBI has good reason to be very sensitive to mishandling of classified information. A large number of our secret operatives have been taken out lately suggesting that there are indeed highly placed spies selling out the US.

      Sure they didn’t raid Hillary because she was squick and willing to hand over anything the FBI and Congress requested. The missing emails had been deleted not hidden in a basement. Nor were there any indication that any of the turned over or missing emails contained any top secret information. Only 5 of them contained secondary information that after the fact had been classified at the lowest level.

      1. Rick Stryker

        Ivan,

        Hilary Clinton did not hand over anything requested. When the State Department requested work related emails, she and her legal team unilaterally decided what was work related and what wasn’t without any oversight or view from State. Clinton then directed that what she and only she decided not turn over, about 33,000 emails, be permanently deleted by using the open source program bleachbit, so that they could never be recovered and no one could ever check.

        Yet, no one raided her looking for stolen government records.

        1. pgl

          Hilary Clinton did not hand over anything requested…Yet, no one raided her looking for stolen government records.

          The number of those alleged documents was exactly zero. Even someone all wrapped up in irrelevant calculus knows that. The 33,000 alleged emails was clearly a Trump LIE. And of course a troll like you repeats that LIE.

          1. Rick Stryker

            No, a pg13 lie, which is very typical for you. The number has been estimated to be about 33k. We don’t know the exact number but Clinton did not turn in at least 30k emails, claiming they were private—wedding plans and all that. If they were so innocuous, why did she have them permanently wiped.

          2. pgl

            Rick Stryker
            August 28, 2022 at 2:38 pm

            A Trump utterance differs from a fact. And emails are not the same thing as a classified document. You need to return to your precisely defined first derivatives which BTW are not the same thing as those second derivatives.

        2. Ivan

          So FBI never got and examined that Hillary Clinton email server? – or did they get it without requesting it?

          I guess life is easy in the reich wing universe. If reality is unpleasant just deny it – if something is missing in your narrative just make it up.

          1. Rick Stryker

            Ivan,

            Life is easy in the left wing universe since you don’t have to worry about facts.

            The FBI got the server after Clinton securely wiped over half the emails. The wipe was so thorough that the FBI, even with its advanced forensic methods, could not recover the emails. Thus, the FBI was not able to determine fully to what extent Clinton had classified info. Moreover, Clinton’s server was wiped after she was ordered to retain emails by the Congressional Benghazi committee. So no, the FBI was not able to examine her server because she destroyed the evidence. And she flouted a congressional investigative order to boot.

          2. pgl

            Rick Stryker
            August 28, 2022 at 5:11 pm
            Ivan,

            Life is easy in the left wing universe since you don’t have to worry about facts.

            OH WOW – BIG BAD RICKY BOY PULLS THE I’M RUBBER YOU’RE GLUE TRICK!!!! So childish.

            ‘The FBI got the server after Clinton securely wiped over half the emails. The wipe was so thorough that the FBI, even with its advanced forensic methods, could not recover the emails.’

            Even if this rightwing canard were remotely true, thoroughly erased emails cannot be retrieved by our enemies. Ricky boy,s little tantrums are a lot like Trump’s tantrums. They routinely contradict the previous tantrum.

          3. Barkley Rosser

            Rick,

            You menyion “the Congressional Benghazi committee.” You seem to forget that there were 8 of them, one after another, none of them finding a single thing on Hillary. The seventh, run by House Intel comm chaired by a GOP, was super thorough and only found that GOP-led Congress cut funding for State Department security. But, no, there needed to be yet another committee, Fox News needed more Congresspeople to keep showing up to promise yet another breakthrough that would finally nail her but never did.

            Oh yeah, in that final hour of that final committee, led by Trey Gowdy, after 11 hours straight of Hillary testimony, they finally nailed her on not having had Amb. Stevens to dinner at her house. Yes! Lock her up!

            Wondering: will Trump show up to testify before the Jan. 6 committee or any other Congressional committee?

    5. baffling

      “Under the statutes and illegal reasoning in the affidavit, the search of Trump’s property was grossly illegal. ”
      so now rick is not only the worlds best derivatives trader, he is possibly the the worlds foremost coronavirus modeler, and now we can add world class lawyer to his resume. bravo rick. you have entered the rarefied world of polymaths.

      trump was illegally holding classified top secret documents, in particular those related to nuclear secrets and spy identities. and refused to turn them over when asked. lock him up. please, please, please, dick, sign up as trump’s next lawyer.

      1. AndrewG

        It’s “grossly illegal” because it hurts his feelings. That’s the beginning and the end of it.

  8. joseph

    Rick Stryker: “What an unbelievable scandal. It doesn’t matter what’s been redacted. Under the statutes and illegal reasoning in the affidavit, the search of Trump’s property was grossly illegal.”

    Obviously the DOJ conspiracy must go pretty deep since the warrant was approved by the FBI Director Wray appointed by Donald Trump and signed by judge Bruce Reinhart who was appointed by Donald Trump.

    But keyboard lawyer Stryker ( “quite knowledgeable about legal matters actually”) pretends to know more about the law than the FBI director and a federal judge. Do your realize how foolish you sound?

    1. Rick Stryker

      As usual, you can’t get your facts straight. Reinhart was not appointed by Trump. He’s a magistrate appointed by another judge. He made pejorative remarks about Trump on FB and he also recused himself just a few months earlier from the Trump-Clinton lawsuit. If he recused himself then, why not now?

      Yes, Wray is part of the problem but not because he supports Biden. Much of the Republican leadership would like to see Trump gone too. They resent Trump for taking away control of the Republican Party from the career politicians. Wray reflects their interests.

      No I don’t pretend to know more about the law. As I’ve stated I’m sure they do know that what they are doing is illegal.

      1. pgl

        “you can’t get your facts straight.” And you cannot get your LIES straight!

        “No I don’t pretend to know more about the law.”

        So when you earlier pretended you were some great legal mind, that was your usual resume padding. Good to know.

      2. AndrewG

        Your argument is 100% unfounded, delusional conspiracy theory.

        This entire argument is you telling us how much your feelings are hurt.

  9. joseph

    Stryker: “Hilary Clinton did not hand over anything requested. When the State Department requested work related emails, she and her legal team unilaterally decided what was work related and what wasn’t without any oversight or view from State.”

    Stupid Rick. That is exactly according to law for retention of work related records. Each individual is supposed to go through their electronic and paper documents and turn over copies of work related records from non-government devices. There is no rule requiring any supervision nor is there any mechanism in place to even do so. She complied with the law. (Unlike the Secret Service agents on January 6).

    In fact, Clinton is the first Secretary of State to do so. Colin Powell did all of his email on AOL, and turned over not a single work record. Condi Rice did her email on a Republican National Committee server and turned over not a single work related record.

    Secretary Clinton is the first to fully comply with the law.

    1. Rick Stryker

      As usual, you cannot get your facts straight. There are no laws about workplace emails, but rather state department policies. Clinton violated those policies wholesale. All State employees are supposed to use internal systems for emails. Personal use is permitted on State systems but expected to be small. Use of outside email is permitted under limited circumstances with permission. Any outside solution must implement security practices defined by State infosec, in that context, when you’ve followed the rules, they let you separate personal and work related emails without scrutiny because personal emails would be expected to be small and appropriate security would have been implemented.

      Clinton obeyed none of these policies and claimed half! of her emails were personal. She followed a rule that was in her interest to follow: a rule not designed for her massive violation of policy.

      1. Barkley Rosser

        And not only did HRC violate those State Dept rules, but so did Colin Powell even more so, and reportedly Condoleeza Rice and Madeleine Albright to some extent as well. LOCK THEM ALL UP (well, too late for Albright)!

        1. Rick Stryker

          Barkley,

          Not true that Colin Powell violated the rules. When he was Secretary of State, Opennet had just been developed and it only allowed sending email within the State Department. Powell needed to send emails outside so he requested info security to install a private line in his office so that he could use an external email account. The State Department was fully aware and created the solution for him.

          When Hilary came along, Opennet had no such restrictions. Hilary just violated the rules and didn’t get permission.

    2. Rick Stryker

      Joseph,

      Some further context on whether Clinton followed the rules by deciding herself which emails were personal.

      The State Department didn’t ask for the emails out of curiosity. They asked because the Benghazi comiittee had sent a request for all email records from the Sec of State. Normally State could comply by just pulling up the records, but not in Hilary Clinton’s case. They had to ask her, since she had a private email server, in violation of department policies. It was at that point that Clinton decided to “ follow the rules” and delete half the emails that she designated “private”

      It must be great to be such a saint, following the rules to the letter, so you can’t be investigated or held accountable.

      1. pgl

        “They asked because the Benghazi comiittee had sent a request for all email records from the Sec of State.”

        Do you even remember what an utter farce these committee hearings were. The basic complaint was that State did not provide sufficient security for our ambassadors there. Of course ambassadors around the world needed much more security as the world has lots of dangerous places. Sec. Clinton asked Congress for more funding so we could beef up security at Benghazi and other places. And the right wing jerks who ran these farce hearings shut down her proposal for more funding.

        Benghazi was the fault of the same right wing clowns who ran this farce hearings.

        And people like Ricky boy applaud these clowns? Disgusting.

        1. baffling

          rick is simply diverting the conversation away from trump. rather than discuss Clinton, let’s keep to the trump story. trump held top secret classified documents insecurely in his maralago home. these contained secrets about our nuclear weapons programs and identification material for our clandestine personnel. and yet rick has made no comments on these infractions, but continues to relitigate Clinton issues. it is simply a ploy meant to push the discussion away from trump. if rick is such a law and order guy, he should have volumes of material to discuss regarding trump, compared to Clinton. and yet we hear crickets from rick criticizing the trump mafia. not surprising.

  10. joseph

    Stryker: “By conducting official business as Secretary of State on a private, unsecured email server, Clinton ensured that Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and countless other states read every email the Secretary of State sent and received, whether classified or not, including emails to and from the President.”

    This is just tremendously ignorant about government security procedures.

    You know what else is an unsecured email server? Every single .gov email account that every member of government uses. .gov email is not secured. There is absolutely no difference between a .gov email and a Clinton server email with regards to security.

    Although we know for a fact that the .gov email system has been hacked many times but as far as we know the Clinton server was never hacked.

    But that is beside the point, everyone in government uses unsecured email for regular routine daily business. This is why everyone in government assumes their email is accessible to bad actors and do not use it for classified documents.

    So this idea that Clinton was using an “unsecured email server” is meaningless because everyone in government using a .gov email is using an unsecured email system. There is no difference between a Clinton server and a .gov server.

    This shocking claim that China and Iran and North Korea could read their email is stupid because everyone already assumes that possibility. The rule everyone uses is don’t email anything you don’t want the Chinese or Russians to know.

    Comey slandered Clinton by claiming that Clinton had classified documents on her server. It turned out on later Congressional testimony under oath that Comey had lied and had to retract that claim. There were no documents on her server marked classified. The only thing on her servers were 8 conversations out of 33,000 that were retroactively classified as Top Secret years after she left office.

    And what were these “Top Secret” conversations. They were back and forth discussing of the political implications of CIA drone attacks in Pakistan, which is the State Department’s job. These were drone attacks that were already public information discussed in newspapers, but bureaucrats in the basements of DC automatically classifies any mention of drone attacks, even publicly discussed ones. There was no compromise of secret information because it wasn’t really a secret. The classification bureaucrats who read these emails years later did not know that, but “drone” automatically equals “classified”.

    1. Rick Stryker

      As usual you cannot get your facts straight. The State Department requires that email on sensitive but unclassified business be conducted on its enterprise system Opennet, which is a logical and physical network that links State Department LANs with each other through private routers , lines, etc. As such, it’s much more secure than a standard email account on the open internet. State Department policy requires all employees, including Clinton, to use Openet. For classified stuff, you use Classnet in the state department. Clinton violated those policies and used a much less secure private system.

      1. pgl

        “As usual you cannot get your facts straight.”

        I guess you will be starting each of your comments with this pointless little BS. Which is perfect since you cannot get your LIES straight.

      2. pgl

        Wow – Wikipedia quality research. Did Bullwinkle or Rocky the Squirrel mansplain to you what these terms mean?

    2. pgl

      Well said! Of course keyboard lawyer Stryker is going to repeat his BS over and over. Something called the repeated assertion which keyboard lawyer Stryker thinks makes it a FACT. He is THAT DUMB.

  11. baffling

    if you notice, rick does not want to discuss the trump violations. the new talking point from the gop is on clinton and illegal affidavits. he would like to distract the discussion away from the trump violations.

    trump has illegally stored top secret documents at his home, including secrets related to nuclear weapons and spy identities. not sure why. perhaps to sell to a foreign country? to use as leverage in the event the doj decides to prosecute him? why rick would defend such behavior is interesting, but not surprising. lock him up.

    1. pgl

      Ricky the world class mob lawyer is prepared to defend his client on the Presidential Records Act as if that is the only possible charge. Yea – he may be Trump’s dumbest lawyer ever.

  12. joseph

    Stryker: “Yes, Wray is part of the problem but not because he supports Biden. Much of the Republican leadership would like to see Trump gone too. They resent Trump for taking away control of the Republican Party from the career politicians. Wray reflects their interests.”

    OMG! They’re all in on the conspiracy. The Trump judges, the FBI, the DOJ, the Deep State and all of the Republican leadership. It is unimaginably vast.

    Rick Stryker. At total loon who’s gone so far down the rabbit hole with his ravings, there’s no going back. But we knew this years ago on the first day of the Trump administration when Stryker leaped to the defense of his insecure and anxiety ridden Dear Leader about the size of his inaugural crowd. “Megapixel pictures” proved it, he said.

    But that’s the way it goes with cults. You are required to debase yourself by defending the most outrageously trivial lies as homage to prove your loyalty, And Stryker has complied obediently whenever asked.

    1. Rick Stryker

      Joe,

      I guess exaggerating my points into something I didn’t say is the only play you have. As soon as you attempt to say something substantive, I immediately correct your falsehoods. All government email accounts are the same and as insecure as commercial email? Nope, false. The magistrate who approved the warrant was approved by Trump? Nope, false. State Department email policies are laws? Nope, false.

  13. joseph

    Stryker: “It must be great to be such a saint, following the rules to the letter, so you can’t be investigated or held accountable.”

    That’s hilarious. Strykers worst complaint about Clinton is that she followed the rules to the letter so that she committed no crimes — unlike his hero Donald Trump.

  14. AndrewG

    The picture is worth a thousand words, easily. Pending obstruction of justice charges – even more.
    Don’t worry, CoRev, it hurts your feelings, so it’s fake news. Just go back to blindly defending the worst president in American history who you voted for twice.

    U.S. Justice Dept says Trump team may have moved classified papers amid probe
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/us-justice-dept-says-trump-team-may-have-moved-classified-papers-amid-probe/ar-AA11iriZ

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department said it had evidence that classified documents were deliberately concealed from the FBI when it tried to retrieve them in June from former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, prompting its unprecedented search of his home.

    In a 54-page filing, prosecutors on Tuesday laid out their evidence of obstruction of justice, alleging publicly for the first time that Trump aides both falsely certified in June that the former president had returned all the government records he had stored in his home after leaving the White House in January 2021.

    It also revealed that Trump lawyers “explicitly prohibited government personnel from opening or looking inside any of the boxes” inside a storage room when FBI agents first traveled to his Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago resort in June to retrieve the records.

    “The government also developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation,” the department said in a filing in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida.

    It released a photograph of some of the records found inside Trump’s home bearing classification markings, some of which refer to clandestine human sources.

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