Posted on 08/09/2022 7:12:23 PM PDT by lasereye
Headline from Politics Insider this morning:
Feds likely obtained ‘pulverizing’ amount of evidence ahead of searching Trump's Mar-a-Lago home, legal experts say.
Pulverizing! Hold that thought.
The top story today in the New York Times, bylined by its top White House reporter, speculates this is about “delayed returning” of “15 boxes of material requested by officials with the National Archives.” If that’s true, and it’s not tied to January 6th or some other far more serious offense, then the Justice Department just committed institutional suicide and moved the country many steps closer to once far-out eventualities like national revolt or martial law. This is true no matter what you think of Trump. Despite the early reports of “cheers” in the West Wing, the mood in center-left media has already drifted markedly from the overnight celebration. The Times story today added a line missing from most early reports: “The search, however, does not mean prosecutors have determined that Mr. Trump committed a crime.”
The hugeness of the story has become part of its explanation. An action so extreme, we’re told by expert after expert, could only be based upon “pulverizing” evidence.
Throughout the Trump years we’ve seen a numbing pattern of rhetorical slippage in coverage of investigations. The aforementioned Politics Insider story is no different. “Likely” evidence in the headline becomes more profound in the text. An amazing five bylined writers explain:
Regardless of the raid’s focus legal experts quickly reached a consensus about it: A pile of evidence must have backed up the warrant authorizing the search.
Politico insisted such an action must have required a magistrate’s assent “based upon evidence of a potential crime.” CNN wrote how authorities necessarily “had probable grounds to believe a crime had been committed,” while the New York Times formulation was that “the F.B.I. would have needed to convince a judge that it had probable cause that a crime had been committed.”
It’s amazing how short our cultural memory has become. Apparently few remember all the other times this exact rhetoric was deployed in the interminable list of other Trump investigations, only to backfire later. Does anyone remember this doozy?
Applications for FISA warrants, Comey said, are often thicker than his wrists, and that thickness represents all the work Justice Department attorneys and FBI agents have to do to convince a judge that such surveillance is appropriate in an investigation.
That Washington Post story from April 11, 2017, “FBI obtained FISA warrant to monitor former Trump advisor Carter Page,” by Devlin Barrett, Ellen Nakashima, and Adam Entous, was one of the key moments in the Trump-Russia scandal. It repeatedly stressed the illustrious credentials of all involved, noting, “any FISA application has to be approved at the highest levels of the Justice Department and the FBI,” before dismounting to the crucial conclusion:
The government’s application for the surveillance order targeting Page included a lengthy declaration that laid out investigators’ basis for believing that Page was an agent of the Russian government and knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of Moscow, officials said.
Within a few days after that, Politics Insider — the same outlet telling us today about the import of the warrant — ran a piece by intel community spokescritter Natasha Bertrand called, “We just got a huge sign that the US intelligence community believes the Trump dossier is legitimate.” The article deployed the circular logic that drove years of Trump-probe stories. We have evidence of an investigation, therefore the investigation must have evidence:
The FBI reportedly used the explosive, unverified dossier detailing President Donald Trump's alleged ties to Russia to bolster its case for a warrant that would allow it to surveil Carter Page, an early foreign-policy adviser to Trump’s campaign. It’s a key signal that the FBI had enough confidence in the validity of the document to work to corroborate it and present it in court.
Guess some people think I believe such nonsense
Yeah.
With so many people getting high on drugs for decades, what did you expect—reasoning and political action early enough to prevent such outrages?
“People cheering the current totalitarianism and despotism do not think about how it could easily turn on them.”
Why, yes. Yes, I think that’s... splendid.
Like a gift from God, even. Such golden opportunity...
Evil is NEVER so satisfyingly !!CRUSHED!! as when it’s RIPE.
I’m waiting for the “proof” that Carter Page is a Russian spy.
That just sounds crazy.
I don’t know how to post a new thread. I usually just lurk. I do think that could be an awfully juicy thing to delve into for somebody a lot smarter than me. I usually am good at finding connections, but don’t go farther than that.
“He was a double-naught spy?“
Golly! - Why, he’s also a Sophisticated International Playboy!
YEEEEEEEEE-HAWWWWWW!!
Thank goodness somebody got the joke!
👍👍👍 🤣😜
I think Page being a spy is a ridiculous assertion.
Oooonnnnn-Doggie!
LOL
Cement Pond!
Fancy Eating Table!
People who fled Cuba now wonder if it was worth it.
In the fullness of time this may go down as the FBI’s biggest mistake since they incinerated 79 people near Waco, TX.
Not as horrifying as Waco, to be sure, but a miscalculation of appropriate force and strategy to rival that debacle only played out on the political field of battle.
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