Trump Mocked For His Petty AF Response To DOJ's Mar-A-Lago Documents Photo
Amelia Mavis Christnot

On August 8, 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) executed a search warrant at former Republican President Donald Trump's home turned paid membership resort Mar-a-Lago.

Since then, Trump and his acolytes in the GOP and his MAGA minions have attacked the FBI and the federal entity that filed the request for a warrant, the Department of Justice (DoJ). Seemingly escaping their ire—or perhaps not as vulnerable to the conspiracy theories and false rhetoric aimed at the DoJ and FBI—is the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

Most individuals at the center of a federal investigation would go a no comment route for fear of incriminating themselves further, but not Donald Trump.

Seemingly unable to censor himself, Trump and his various mouthpieces made numerous public statements about the warrant used to search Mar-a-Lago while never sharing their copy of the warrant.

In response, the DoJ released the warrant.

Trump's camp moved on to making claims about the affidavit that ...

https://secondnexus.com/trump-response- ... ents-photo

Jared Kushner defends Trump's Mar-a-Lago docs
"It's an issue of paperwork," Kushner says
BOB BRIGHAM

Donald Trump was defended by his son-in-law when Jared Kushner was interviewed by a British television station.

Kay Burley of Sky News interviewed Kushner about Trump's potential 2024 campaign, "Top Secret files stashed at Mar-a-Lago" and the former president's chocolate stash.

The interview, set to air on Friday, was teased online.

Burley said Trump "took Top Secret documents home, potentially risking the security of the United States."

"Yeah, I think that it's something that — again, this seems like it's an issue of paperwork that should've been able to be worked out between DOJ and him," Kushner said, even though the documents had been both requested and subpoenaed and he father-in-law still allegedly did not return them to the U.S. government.

"We've seen the photograph, haven't we, where it says Top Secret," Burley noted.

"Yeah, like I said, I, I, I, I've seen a lot of allegations made by the media over my four years that turned out not to be true," Kushner replied.

The photo was not an allegation by the media, but FBI evidence submitted under oath by the DOJ in ...

https://www.salon.com/2022/09/02/jared- ... s_partner/

Jay Kuo

Republicans and Donald Trump can’t seem to help themselves: They always bring it back somehow to Hillary Clinton. When Mar-a-Lago was searched pursuant to a valid warrant and highly sensitive, top secret documents were retrieved, Trump predictably pointed at Clinton’s emails to claim there was somehow a double standard at work. “Hillary Clinton was allowed to delete and acid wash 33,000 emails AFTER they were subpoenaed by Congress,” Trump complained, falsely, in a post on his Truth Social platform. “Absolutely nothing has happened to hold her accountable.” And yesterday, he riled up a crowd in Pennsylvania by talking about Hillary’s emails, as they chanted “Lock her up!” without a trace of irony.

Conservative allies of the former president have echoed that messaging. In an OpEd last weekend, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board called for the “Comey-Clinton” document standard, under which former FBI Director James Comey ultimately decided not to indict Clinton, to apply now to Trump—meaning Attorney General Merrick Garland should not indict him. One-time Trump foe turned awkwardly staunch sycophant Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) chimed in, irresponsibly warning on Fox News’ Sunday Night in America, “If they tried to prosecute President Trump for mishandling classified information after Hillary Clinton set up a server in her basement, there literally will be riots in the street.”

The mere mention of the name Hillary Clinton will have the Trump base seeing red, rendering any hope of reasoned discourse, which was already admittedly dim, quite impossible. But for persuadable voters, who have swung nine points recently and are beginning to break for the Democrats this election cycle, it is worth laying out the reasons why the Trump and Clinton investigations are not in the same league, and why a decision to charge Trump today would be consistent with Comey’s decision not to charge Clinton.

**Clinton’s Mishandling of a Handful of Classified Documents

Clinton was under investigation for using a private email server over which a handful of documents that were later deemed to be classified had been improperly transmitted. The total number of documents that had classified markings was ultimately not specified by Comey, other than to say there were “some.” None of these documents was considered top secret or a threat to national defense. The documents were exchanged between Clinton, who had security clearance while serving as Secretary of State, and others who also had the proper security clearance.

The manner in which these documents and information were exchanged—via a private email server—drew the attention of investigators. Clinton cooperated fully with prosecutors and testified for 11 hours under oath before a Congressional committee. She was never accused of obstruction, and the nature of the classified information she inadvertently exchanged did not rise to a threat level that might trigger more serious allegations.

FBI Director Comey ultimately determined in July of 2016 that Clinton, while “extremely reckless” in her handling of the documents (a criticism that seems almost laughable by today’s Trumpian standards), would not be indicted because there was zero evidence that Clinton intentionally transmitted or willfully mishandled classified information. As a result, he said, “our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” In 2019, during the Trump administration, a U.S. State Department investigation concluded that there was no evidence of deliberate mishandling of classified material by any state department employees.

**Trump’s Theft of Hundreds of Top Secret Documents

The case against Trump stands in marked contrast to Clinton’s. Trump took with him to Mar-a-Lago a trove of highly sensitive, top secret documents including human source intelligence and documents that were Special Access Program materials. These documents were marked with the highest levels of classification and comprise some 1,000 pages, based upon what has been recovered so far. The unauthorized possession of such documents is a per se violation of the Espionage Act, for which Trump and likely others are being investigated, because these are documents that in the wrong hands could endanger our national defense.

Trump kept the highly sensitive government documents at Mar-a-Lago, a highly insecure location known to be frequented by spies and enemies of the United States. Trump openly resisted requests from the National Archives for the return of these documents for over a year, and then he further resisted a grand jury subpoena for them, requiring the head of the Justice Department’s Counterintelligence section to pay a visit and retrieve key documents. Even then, Trump’s lawyers lied to investigators by submitting a signed declaration that all documents responsive to the subpoena had been returned, when that manifestly was untrue.

The efforts by Trump’s advisors to impede and mislead investigators led to an application of a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago, resulting in the recovery of even more top secret and classified documents. Trump’s efforts to delay, resist, obfuscate, and obstruct evince an intentional and willful state of mind, even while Trump retained possession of some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets.

As the above discussion makes clear, it doesn’t take much to dispose of comparisons between Clinton and Trump. That the right is coming out with more of this line speaks to the cynicism and banality of their argument, namely that the Justice Department should give Trump a pass simply because it gave Clinton one. As author and political commentator Douglas Blackmon astutely observed, “A clear sign of propaganda is when legal/ethical principles that were *vital* when they might injure enemies are suddenly ‘welcome’ if they might help an ally.” This, Blackmon noted, is exactly what the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board of “sad shape-shifters” has demanded in its “latest clumsy defense of Trump.”

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Reckon the Donald wasn't just "a little bit pregnant", after all. He's full-on knocked up in the last trimester.

“Last week, a Justice Department filing revealed that Mr. Trump’s lawyers had misled federal investigators about whether he had handed over to the Justice Department all the classified documents he took from the White House when he left office. That raised questions about whether the lawyers, M. Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, could be prosecuted themselves and might ultimately be forced to become witnesses against their client,” The Times reported.

Laurence Tribe @tribelaw
QUACK!