A vast quantity of material has been published on the FBI raid on Trump’s Florida mansion. There has been opinions expressed by legal authorities that the documents that the Department of Justice are claiming are illegal, and not declassified, and in fact are declassified, as Trump as president had the exclusive power to do this, and would have had rocks in his head not to have done so. The lawyers will argue about this, with the matter going to the Supreme Court of the United States, who will almost certainly decide in favour of Trump.
Yet, the latest news revelation indicates that search for classified nuclear secrets is no doubt bs, and that the Biden administration was just fishing for any dirt that they could get on Trump. This is shown by the fact that the FBI took documents which were attorney-client communications. Of course, this is illegal, and the material will be ultimately returned, but the goal was to access this information to give them ideas for destroying Trump. Politics was dirty, but is filthy in this era where the rule of law has been tossed out the window.
“The Department of Justice (DOJ) allegedly took materials that contained privileged attorney-client communications in its raid last Monday on former President Donald Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago, Florida.
The claim, reported by Fox News, raises new questions about the DOJ’s tactics, as well as doubts about whether the DOJ would be able to use any of the seized materials in a hypothetical prosecution of the former president.
The DOJ is apparently opposing the appointment of a “special master,” a judicial official who would conduct an independent review and decide which materials could be handed over to the government and which materials would have to be returned to Trump and his attorneys.
Fox News reported:
The FBI seized boxes containing records covered by attorney-client privilege and potentially executive privilege during its raid of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, sources familiar with the investigation told Fox News, adding that the Justice Department opposed Trump lawyers’ request for the appointment of an independent, special master to review the records.
Sources familiar with the investigation told Fox News Saturday that the former president’s team was informed that boxes labeled A-14, A-26, A-43, A-13, A-33, and a set of documents—all seen on the final page of the FBI’s property receipt —contained information covered by attorney-client privilege.
The FBI seized classified records from Trump’s Palm Beach home during its unprecedented Monday morning raid, including some marked as top secret. But the former president is disputing the classification, saying the records have been declassified.
The attorney-client privilege, protected under the right to counsel guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, means that almost any communications from a client to his or her attorney cannot be revealed.
The only exceptions to the rule are when a client is communicating the intent to commit a future crime, or when the attorney is involved in a joint criminal or fraudulent endeavor. A confession of past crimes is still covered by the privilege.
Similar questions about attorney-client privilege surrounded the FBI’s seizure of materials in 2018 from the apartment and office of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen. A special master ruled that two-thirds of the materials concerning communications between Cohen and Trump were covered by attorney-client privilege and could not be used by the DOJ.
Last year, a federal judge ordered the appointment of a special master after the DOJ seized journalist James O’Keefe’s phone. The New York Times, which faced a defamation suit from O’Keefe, had begun publishing legal memos between O’Keefe and his attorneys shortly after the phone had been seized in a raid related to Ashley Biden’s diary, prompting suspicions of leaks.
Legal scholar Jonathan Turley wrote that the request for the appointment of a special master after the Mar-a-Lago raid seemed reasonable, given the search warrant’s broad scope: “The request for a special master would seem reasonable, particularly given the sweeping language used in the warrant. It is hard to see what material could not be gathered under this warrant.”
Speculation has mounted that the true purpose of the raid for presidential documents allegedly retained by Trump was to search for materials that might relate to the Capitol riot on January 6, for which Democrats want the DOJ to prosecute Trump.”
“A former director of national intelligence said Aug. 12 that it is “virtually impossible” to prosecute people for mishandling classified documents, and asserted that former President Donald Trump has the “ultimately declassification authority” in terms of such documents.
“The president does have ultimate declassification authority. He can literally declassify—and President Trump had that authority, and could declassify anything you want while he was president,” John Ratcliffe, a Republican congressman before Trump appointed him to be director of national intelligence, said on Fox News.
According to documents unsealed earlier Friday, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was raided by FBI agents on Aug. 8 because of potential violations of several laws, including the Espionage Act, which some legal experts say relates to possessing classified defense information.
An inventory showed that agents seized what they listed as classified, secret, and top secret documents.
Ratcliffe said on Fox that before the search warrant materials were made public, he didn’t believe the raid was about classified materials.
“It has to be more than that because the Department of Justice and the FBI have already set a standard that makes it virtually impossible to prosecute a case like that,” he said, pointing to how former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s possession of classified documents was handled by the FBI, including then-Director James Comey.
“As people talk about Espionage Act and classified documents and all of that, the standard was set in 2016. Remember the Department of Justice and the FBI took the official position that Hillary Clinton, who was in possession of classified documents … that [being] in possession of that, that wasn’t enough, and that being grossly negligent and being careless, Jim Comey told us, that’s not enough under the Espionage Act. You have to know you’re violating the law,” Ratcliffe said.
“Even if you assume the worst case scenario for President Trump, that there were classified documents in his possession at Mar-a-Lago, that only puts him where Hillary Clinton was. And what the FBI and the Department of Justice would have to show is that he knew the documents were there and he didn’t think they were declassified,” he added.
Trump wrote on Truth Social that all the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago were declassified.
“He had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken into the residence were deemed to be declassified,” a Trump spokesperson told Just the News. “The power to classify and declassify documents rests solely with the President of the United States. The idea that some paper-pushing bureaucrat, with classification authority delegated BY THE PRESIDENT, needs to approve of declassification is absurd.”
Others weren’t sure.
“He can’t just wave a wand and say it’s declassified,” Immerman said. “There has to be a formal process. That’s the only way the system can work,” Richard Immerman, an assistant deputy director of national intelligence during the Obama administration, told NBC News. “I’ve seen thousands of declassified documents. They’re all marked ‘declassified’ with the date they were declassified.”