Posted on 09/20/2022 4:54:11 AM PDT by MtnClimber
It’s all just another campaign of deceit—with reliable assistance from the national news media—to get Trump.
With one sentence, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon spoke for the majority of Americans who no longer have faith in the nation’s top law enforcement agency. “It is also true, of course, that even-handed procedure does not demand unquestioning trust in the determinations of the Department of Justice,” she wrote in her September 15 order denying the government’s request to prevent a third-party review of allegedly “classified” documents seized by the FBI during the raid of Mar-a-Lago last month.
At issue is the validity of claims made by prosecutors that roughly 100 records taken in the unprecedented pillage of a former president’s home on August 8 have classified markings and therefore do not belong to him. The kerfuffle began earlier this year when the Justice Department acted on a criminal referral by the national archivist, who accused Trump of unlawfully keeping classified material at his home.
Although Trump’s representatives cooperated with investigators for months, Attorney General Merrick Garland nonetheless authorized the nine-hour raid conducted by at least a dozen FBI agents resulting in the seizure of more than 11,000 pieces of evidence, including personal items such as books, medical files, tax information, apparel, and passports.
And his office has been backpedaling ever since.
The reason is that Garland’s henchmen ran into a buzzsaw named Judge Cannon. Trump filed a lawsuit seeking a court-appointed special master after requests for an impartial arbiter were denied by the government for two weeks. “The FBI and DOJ have demonstrated a willingness to treat President Trump differently than any other citizen,” Trump’s lawyers accurately argued on August 22. “[In] light of recent FBl behavior when President Trump is a part of its aim, this Court should feel obliged to demand candor and transparency, and not just ‘trust us’ assertions from DOJ.”
It appears Cannon needed little convincing. Although self-proclaimed legal “experts” mocked the lawsuit as dead-on-arrival, Cannon torched that groupthink when she announced a few days later her intent to consider Trump’s motion due to the “exceptional circumstances” of the matter. A federal prosecutor for seven years, Cannon, 40, undoubtedly watched the Justice Department’s rapid descent from a trusted government institution to a brazen enforcement arm of the Democratic Party before Trump appointed her to the bench in 2020.
In the past few weeks, Cannon has exposed a number of errors and falsehoods related to the criminal investigation into Trump for violating the Espionage Act, obstructing justice, and concealing government property—and she’s pulled no punches when it comes to her former employer.
Her blistering September 5 order finalizing the appointment of a special master revealed that the government absconded with “personal effects without evidentiary value” and at least 500 pages of privileged communications, a trove the Justice Department downplayed as a “limited subset” of evidence. (A heavily redacted version of the search warrant gave FBI agents wide berth, allowing investigators to take anything within close proximity of papers containing so-called “classification markings.”)
Calling out a department famous for leaking damaging anti-Trump tidbits to compliant journalists and columnists, Cannon partially justified her decision based on potential harm to the former president by “improper disclosure of sensitive information” to the public. At one point during the proceedings, a prosecutor “acknowledged the unfortunate existence of leaks to the press,” Cannon wrote in a footnote
Contrary to solemn pledges the government’s process was above reproach, Cannon cited at least two occasions where a separate filter team passed along privileged material to investigators. Those errors, Cannon wrote, “yield questions about the adequacy of the filter review process.” Cannon expressed skepticism of the government’s explanation as to why it happened. “[There] is a basis on this record to question how materials passed through the screening process, further underscoring the importance of procedural safeguards and an additional layer of review.”
Indeed.
Not only did Cannon approve the appointment of a special master, she halted the Justice Department’s use of the documents in its ongoing investigation of Trump until the review is complete. But the Biden regime is pulling every trick in its broad arsenal to keep the allegedly “classified” documents under wraps.
On the day Cannon announced Trump’s lawsuit would proceed, Avril Haines, Biden’s director of national intelligence, announced her office needed to conduct an assessment to determine whether the classified material posed a national security threat. “[Appointment] of a special master is unnecessary and would significantly harm important governmental interests, including national security interests,” prosecutors warned in an August 30 filing.
Even after Cannon carved out an exception for the intelligence community’s work, the government insisted that wasn’t enough. “The Intelligence Community’s review and assessment cannot be readily segregated from the Department of Justice’s (‘DOJ’) and Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (‘FBI’) activities in connection with the ongoing criminal investigation,” prosecutors wrote in a motion again seeking to conceal the allegedly classified papers from the special master. “Moreover, the government and the public are irreparably injured when a criminal investigation of matters involving risks to national security is [halted].”
To support its claim, the Justice Department submitted a six-page sworn statement by the FBI’s assistant counterintelligence chief explaining that senior Justice Department and FBI officials were responsible for both the intelligence assessment and the criminal investigation—cold comfort to anyone, Cannon included, observing this highly partisan and weaponized Justice Department.
Prosecutors then laughably informed the court that investigators needed to find out what papers were filed in empty folders labeled “classified,” another obvious stall tactic. “The FBI would be chiefly responsible for investigating what materials may have once been stored in these folders and whether they may have been lost or compromised—steps that, again, may require the use of grand jury subpoenas, search warrants, and other criminal investigative tools and could lead to evidence that would also be highly relevant to advancing the criminal investigation.”
That’s quite a slippery slope ya’ got there, Merrick Garland
The Justice Department is appealing her order while shifting the goalposts once again. Even if Trump declassified papers investigators now insist are classified, the Biden regime must perform another assessment “to understand what had been declassified and why (and who has seen it) to protect intelligence sources and methods,” prosecutors wrote in the appeal motion.
Of course, a president has full constitutional authority to declassify whatever he wants; there is no process that allows a succeeding administration to review declassification orders of a former president. And the last person who should be trusted with such an undertaking is Haines, a former aide to disgraced CIA Director John Brennan.
Further, it isn’t just the special master that the government wants kept in the dark about the classified documents. Representative Mike Turner (R-Ohio), ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview over the weekend that Garland’s office refuses to brief congressional leadership on the investigation despite numerous requests.
None of this fosters confidence in the government’s claims, nor should it. To the contrary, it appears to be another campaign of deceit waged by the Justice Department—with reliable assistance from the national news media—to get Trump.
And Cannon, to her immense credit, isn’t buying it. “The Court does not find it appropriate to accept the Government’s conclusions on these important and disputed issues without further review by a neutral third party in an expedited and orderly fashion,” she wrote last week. Cannon also directed the special master to verify the government’s detailed list of seized evidence and obtain “sworn affidavits from Department of Justice personnel” if necessary.
With the appeal pending in a Florida court, Judge Raymond Dearie, the appointed special master, is already at work with a November 30, 2022 deadline; he will convene a meeting of both parties in New York on Tuesday afternoon.
Meanwhile, it’s safe to assume the Justice Department will hatch some new excuse as to why Dearie and his team should not have access to the “classified” material. One can only imagine what they’ll come up with next.
The coverup of the soft coup continues even while fabrications continue.
Merry Garland’s DOJ Merrymen sure do suck.
It is the 95% that make the other 5% look bad.
Federal Bureau of Instigators.
Since President Trumps lawyers were not allowed to witness what was taken.....or even allowed in the building while this charade was happening there was absolutely no oversight as to what was taken.
The doj can now make up any story they want as to what they found.
This whole mess is beyond despicable, illegal and really just pure evil.
Our country, our culture, and our very society rests on a foundation of trust in these institutions.
Thx to the Democrats, the Deep State, and other institutions that have given themselves over to the Left, the very fabric of American society is teetering on the edge of collapse.
They are all complicit. ALL of them.
This is merely a (probably partial) listing of possibly applicable law and no inference that Trump committed a related crime should be made:
18 U.S. Code § 798 - Disclosure of classified information
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/798
(d)Whoever, lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it; or
(e)Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it; or
(f)Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense,
(1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or
(2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
18 U.S. Code § 793 - Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/793
I am going to make a wild prediction here.
The FBI and DOJ buried the Biden Laptop, not even placing it into evidence, so that it “would not interfere with the election.
When the Special Master is done, it will be Nov 30th and Trump will have already declared.
My prediction: Full steam ahead by the intelligence community, administration, and DOJ/FBI to smear Trump and spy yet again. They will once again treat him differently because he represents us.
From Wikipedia:
In June 1971, Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo were charged with a felony under the Espionage Act of 1917 because they lacked legal authority to publish classified documents that came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. The Supreme Court in New York Times Co. v. United States found that the government had not made a successful case for prior restraint of Free Speech, but a majority of the justices ruled that the government could still prosecute the Times and the Post for violating the Espionage Act in publishing the documents. Ellsberg and Russo were not acquitted of violating the Espionage Act. However, they were freed due to a mistrial based on irregularities in the government’s case.
The divided Supreme Court had denied the government’s request to restrain the press. In their opinions, the justices expressed varying degrees of support for the First Amendment claims of the press against the government’s “heavy burden of proof” in establishing that the publisher “has reason to believe” the material published “could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation”.
The case prompted Harold Edgar and Benno C. Schmidt Jr. to write an article on espionage law in the 1973 Columbia Law Review. Their article was entitled “The Espionage Statutes and Publication of Defense Information”. Essentially they found the law poorly written and vague, with parts of it probably unconstitutional. Their article became widely cited in books and in future court arguments on Espionage cases.
United States v. Dedeyan in 1978 was the first prosecution under 793(f)(2) (Dedeyan ‘failed to report’ that information had been disclosed). The courts relied on Gorin v. United States (1941) for precedent. The ruling touched on several constitutional questions, including vagueness of the law and whether the information was “related to national defense”. The defendant received a 3-year sentence.
In 1979–80, Truong Dinh Hung (aka David Truong) and Ronald Louis Humphrey were convicted under 793(a), (c), and (e) as well as several other laws. The ruling discussed several constitutional questions regarding espionage law, “vagueness”, the difference between classified information and “national defense information”, wiretapping and the Fourth Amendment. It also commented on the notion of bad faith (scienter) being a requirement for conviction even under 793(e); an “honest mistake” was said not to be a violation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917
Thankyou for posting the law. Only problem is that the Presidential record act, and the ability for a POTUS to declassify anything, clouds the picture.
Moreover, that law is in conflict if the records demonstrate government illegal activity, classified or not, they are in no way protected.
Crossfire Hurricane was illegal government activity, covering it up with ‘top secret’ claims are irrelevant.
Circumstances matter, what’s in the documents matters. This represents new ground. Will see what the special master finds.
I might add, if the search was based on illegal documents or charges, and done as a general search instead of specific, is it fruit of the poison tree? I think so.
Trump declassified all FBI/DOJ documents related to the Russia claims. Trump also ordered all of those documents released to the public. The DOJ fought all of this which they could not legally do. Trump did not want these documents released to harm national security. Trump wanted to release them to prove that it was leftists in government colluding against him with false information. The FBI classified them because they were protecting themselves.
In the end all they are going to do is cement Trump’s legacy as one of the very best American Presidents.
“Daniel Ellsberg (born April 7, 1931) is an American political activist, and former United States military analyst. While employed by the RAND Corporation, Ellsberg precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of the U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, to The New York Times, The Washington Post and other newspapers.
“On January 3, 1973, Ellsberg was charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 along with other charges of theft and conspiracy, carrying a total maximum sentence of 115 years. Because of governmental misconduct and illegal evidence-gathering, and the defense by Leonard Boudin and Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson, Judge William Matthew Byrne Jr. dismissed all charges against Ellsberg on May 11, 1973.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg
“In late 1969, with the assistance of his former RAND Corporation colleague Anthony Russo, Ellsberg secretly made several sets of photocopies of the classified documents to which he had access; these later became known as the Pentagon Papers. They revealed that, early on, the government had knowledge that the war as then resourced could most likely not be won. Further, as an editor of The New York Times was to write much later, these documents ‘demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance.’”
“The right of the press to publish the papers was upheld in The New York Times Co. v. United States.”
“Trump declassified all FBI/DOJ documents related to the Russia claims. Trump also ordered all of those documents released to the public.”
I’ve read something like 700 pages in the recently snatched documents were indicated by markings to be classified. After excluding such documents, how many pages are left?
I don’t expect you to answer that question, but the FBI & DOJ should.
When there is no law, there is no law.
Garland walks around unprotected
The real cover up is that the DoJ is purposely over-classifying documents and has been doing it overtime in this case(s) against Trump.
This gives possible reasons why documents need to be kept secret:
“UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES MAY AN AGENCY EXEMPT RECORDS FROM AUTOMATIC DECLASSIFICATION?
To exempt records from automatic declassification, agencies must have the specific authority to extend the duration of classification beyond 25 years in the form of a File Series Exemption and/or an Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP) approved declassification guide. Information may be considered for exemption if one or more of the following exemption categories apply:
25X1 – reveal the identity of a confidential human source, a human intelligence source, a relationship with an intelligence or security service of a foreign government or international organization, or a non-human intelligence source; or impair the effectiveness of an intelligence method currently in use, available for use, or under development;
25X2 – reveal information that would assist in the development, production, or use of weapons of mass destruction;
25X3 – reveal information that would impair U.S. cryptologic systems or activities;
25X4 – reveal information that would impair the application of state-of-the-art technology within a US weapon system;
25X5 – reveal formally named or numbered U.S. military war plans that remain in effect, or reveal operational or tactical elements of prior plans that are contained in such active plans;
25X6 – reveal information including foreign government information, that would cause serious harm to relations between the U.S. and a foreign government, or to ongoing diplomatic activities of the U.S;
25X7 – reveal information that would impair the current ability of U.S. government officials to protect the President, Vice President, and other protectees for whom protection services, in the interest of national security, are authorized;
25X8 – reveal information that would seriously impair current national security emergency preparedness plans or reveal current vulnerabilities of systems, installations, or infrastructures relating to the national security;
25X9 – violate a statute, treaty, or international agreement that does not permit the automatic or unilateral declassification of information at 25 years.”
https://www.justice.gov/archives/open/declassification/declassification-faq
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