Posted on 08/15/2022 7:13:10 PM PDT by bitt
FBI agents may also have mistakenly collected privileged documents and plan to return those.
In an acknowledgment the FBI over-collected evidence during the Mar-a-Lago raid, the Justice Department informed Donald Trump's team Monday that agents seized the former president's passports and are obligated to return them, Just the News has learned.
The department was making plans Monday evening to return the passports and has also alerted defense lawyers the FBI may have obtained materials covered by various privileges that will be returned in the next two weeks, two sources told Just the News.
DOJ has designated a process for separating materials that could be covered by executive privilege or attorney client privilege, the sources said.
"Occasionally a warrant collection can grab things outside the scope authorized by the court and the department is now following a procedure we would for any person affected this way," one official said Monday night.
The sources spoke only on the condition of anonymity because the communications between the two sides are confidential.
The revelation came as Trump lawyers are discussing whether to go to court to demand a special legal officer be designated to review Trump evidence that was seized that was outside the scope of the warrant.
A former senior FBI executive said it was surprising that agents collected evidence outside the scope of the warrant because it was already worded unusually broad, unlike most warrants he said during his tenure.
"Trump’s attorneys could have a runway to argue the scope of the search is overly broad," retired Assistant FBI Director Kevin Brock said. "Search warrants normally require a level of specificity that seems to be missing in this warrant. Specificity is important in order to protect 4th Amendment rights from exuberant government overreach designed to find whatever they can."
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, whose conservative watchdog regularly sues the government to release documents and is seeking to compel release of documents in the Trump search, said the government's first court filings appear to describe an overly broad search that went far beyond classified records.
"They were engaged in a fishing expedition, and the warrant itself wasn’t about classified information, though it mentioned it," Fitton told Just the News. "It talked about all sort of other documents. It basically gave the FBI carte blanc to anything they wanted from the Trump home.
"And the fact that a judge signed off on it is very troubling," he added.
Not even close to “good enough”.
Passports may be for different people also.
He also needs to have all returned documents checked for “foreign” devices.
I’m not a smash-and-grab thief; I am merely over-collecting some jewelry.
I hate to be an over-collecter these days; as a precedent has been set...
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2004-12-12-0412120352-story.html
We did that? Really? Who? Seems like the hormone suppression treatment has some flaws.
Raiding the home of your chief political rival and taking his passports is some epic Putin type behavior
The problem is that McCarthy will be House leader after November. I doubt he has what it takes to refuse to act on any continuing resolution funding these key agencies until the top leadership resigns and then cut their budgets 30% in any CR pending prompt and efficient reform and mass firings.
One was expired. I presume he has an official passport as well as a personal passport.
OMG you are to funny, LOL, glad I didn’t have a mouth full of coffee!!
He has a diplomatic passport, I assume in addition to his regular one. And one that was expired.
“There is never an excuse to take a person’s passports.”
You can’t stay at a hotel in Europe without giving the hotel your passport while you are in the hotel.
Same with Army bases...
How big of them./s
Trump’s lawyers should have been in court the next day to get a special master. Not sure they are moving with due haste here.
“DOJ has designated a process for separating materials that could be covered by executive privilege...”
He was the freakin President. Nearly anything he said or wrote, or was said or written to him is covered by Executive Privilege.
They took the documents under the pretext that Trump took classified documents from the WH, which everyone knows that Trump declassified them all when he left. It was nothing but a fishing expedition to see if there is something among the 20 boxes of documents that might be used against him.
I'll bet those were the basis for the warrant.
FWIK< the president doesn’t have to have permission from anyone to declassify documents. He has unilateral power to do so. My guess is that the FIB/DOJ wanted them to KEEP Trump from releasing them.
He directed the National Archives to give access to Kash Patel and John Solomon. Whether they ever saw them, I don't know.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.