Photo submitted in Aug. 30 Justice Department filing that appears to have been taken during the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago, showing records scattered on a floor that include cover sheets for classified information with the markings “SECRET//SCI” and “TOP SECRET//SCI.”U.S. GOVERNMENT PHOTO
Arrest Donald Trump and His Gang – FOR TREASON!
Posted on August 22, 2022 by Royal Rosamond Press
Trump insisted Hillary Clinton be LOCKED UP because she mishandled classified documents – so he knew what he was doing – was not right. So did many Republicans, including Lindsey Graham whose threat is also OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE – in my opinion – especially after the life of Eric Farwell was threatened. This California Congressman worked as a Prosecutor and heard threats against his family. The Republican Party is not THE PARTY OF JESUS and Law and Order! GET OUT!
Steve Bannon is calling for special elections to put Trump back in office. How dare this thug use our Democracy – TO EVADE JUSTICE! Jesus hates this criminal!
EXTRA! Trump also asks for another election – ignoring the winning will of eighty million Democrats! Some believed it was the investigation of Hillary’s e-mails that put Trump in the White House! I say…LOCK HIM UP….in an Insane Asylum! Did Trump take his motorcycle gang on a tour of OUR TOP SECRETS? Consider Putin’s Night Wolves!
John Presco
Then Trump drops the hammer: “REMEDY: Declare the rightful winner, or, and this would be the minimal solution, declare the 2020 Election irreparably compromised and have a new Election, immediately!”
In social media eruption, Trump demands a new election or immediate reinstatement (msn.com)
On Tuesday, The Daily Beast reported that a staffer for Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) received a call from a slur-spewing man who claimed to be on the way to the congressman’s office with a gun to shoot him.
“The intern who fielded the call said the unidentified man went on a ‘rant regarding gay issues, using homophobic slurs a number of times and asked for Swalwell’s current location, according to a statement,” reported Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling. “The intern, who Swalwell noted is just one month into her job, reported that the man then threatened to kill the former Trump impeachment manager.”
Slur-spewing man calls assassination threat into Eric Swalwell’s office: report (msn.com)
Rep. Swalwell Says Man Threatened To Kill Him With Assault Rifle: ‘Bloodshed Is Coming’ (msn.com)
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) tweeted Tuesday that a man called one of his staffers and threatened to kill the Congressman with an assault rifle, marking the latest instance of a member of Congress reporting a death threat recently.
Justice Dept. alleges “obstructive conduct” occurred at Mar-a-Lago after request for classified documents
BY ROBERT LEGARE, MELISSA QUINN
UPDATED ON: AUGUST 31, 2022 / 8:58 AM / CBS NEWS
Washington — The Justice Department filed a 36-page response late Tuesday night to former President Donald Trump’s request for a federal judge to appoint a third party to sift through the records seized at his Florida residence. The government alleges that “obstructive conduct” occurred at Mar-a-Lago after Trump’s legal team allegedly tried to conceal or remove certain records from investigators in the months leading up to the Aug. 8 search.
In the filing, federal prosecutors argued that Trump’s request for a special master to review the records seized in the search “fails for multiple, independent reasons,” and they accused the former president of leveling “wide-ranging meritless accusations” against the U.S. government in the motion he filed last week.
The appointment of a special master, they said, “is unnecessary and would significantly harm important governmental interests, including national security interests.”
Among the filings submitted to the court is a redacted FBI photo — taken during the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago, the Justice Department said — of records recovered from a container in Trump’s office that include cover sheets for classified information with the markings “SECRET//SCI” and “TOP SECRET//SCI.” The documents are positioned next to a container with a framed Time magazine cover, among other items.
Visible on the cover sheets is the message “Contains sensitive compartmented information up to HCS-P/SI/TK.”
In a post to his social media platform Truth Social, Trump claimed he declassified the records visible in the photo from the FBI. However, the Justice Department said Trump’s representatives never “asserted that the former president had declassified the documents or asserted any claim of executive privilege.”
“Terrible the way the FBI, during the Raid of Mar-a-Lago, threw documents haphazardly all over the floor (perhaps pretending it was me that did it!), and then started taking pictures of them for the public to see,” Trump wrote Wednesday. “Thought they wanted them kept Secret? Lucky I Declassified!”
His legal team also has until 8 p.m. Wednesday to submit its own response with the court.
Investigators are probing Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents, specifically records that he took from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago residence when he left office in January 2021, as well as possible obstruction of the investigation.
The Justice Department revealed Friday that earlier this year, investigators found 184 unique documents bearing classification markings — including 67 documents marked confidential, 92 documents marked secret and 25 documents marked top secret — in material the National Archives and Records Administration initially collected from Trump in mid-January. The Archives later referred the matter to the Justice Department for further examination.
In their latest filing, federal prosecutors said that during the course of its investigation, the FBI “developed evidence” indicating that in addition to the 15 boxes retrieved by the Archives in mid-January, “dozens of additional boxes” likely containing classified information remained at Mar-a-Lago.
To retrieve those additional classified records, the Justice Department obtained a grand jury subpoena and on June 3, three FBI agents and a Justice Department attorney visited Mar-a-Lago to get the materials, according to Tuesday’s filing. The officials received from Trump’s representatives a “single Redweld envelope double-wrapped in tape,” prosecutors said. Trump had previously claimed that he “voluntarily” accepted the subpoena and later invited investigators to Florida for the June 3 meeting.
According to the Justice Department’s response, an unidentified individual characterized as the “custodian of records” for Trump’s post-presidential office provided federal law enforcement with a signed certification letter on June 3 that stated a “diligent search” was conducted of boxes brought from the White House to Mar-a-Lago and that “any and all” documents responsive to the grand jury subpoena were turned over.
Records taken from the White House to Mar-a-Lago were stored in a single location, a lawyer for Trump present on June 3 told federal officials: a storage room on the property, the Justice Department said in its response. A preliminary review of the documents conducted by the FBI revealed the envelope contained “38 unique documents bearing classification markings, including 5 documents marked as CONFIDENTIAL, 16 documents marked as SECRET, and 17 documents marked as TOP SECRET.”
“Counsel for the former president offered no explanation as to why boxes of government records, including 38 documents with classification markings, remained at the premises nearly five months after the production of the Fifteen Boxes and nearly one-and-a-half years after the end of the administration,” Justice Department lawyers told the court.
But after the June 3 meeting at Mar-a-Lago, the FBI, according to the response, claims it uncovered “multiple sources of evidence” that indicated more classified documents remained at the property and that a search of the storage room “would not have uncovered all the classified documents at the premises.” Prosecutors added, “the government also developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the storage room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”
It was against that backdrop that the Justice Department sought the search warrant from a federal magistrate judge earlier this month, prosecutors said. During the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago, federal agents seized 33 boxes, containers or “items of evidence” that contained more than 100 classified records, including information classified at the “highest levels,” according to the filing. Three classified documents were allegedly found in desks in Trump’s “45 Office” and also taken by the FBI.
Of the items seized by federal agents, 13 boxes or containers had documents with classification markings, some of which contained colored cover sheets indicating their classification status — the photo of which was submitted to the court in a supplemental filing.
“That the FBI, in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many documents with classification markings as the ‘diligent search’ that the former president’s counsel and other representatives had weeks to perform calls into serious question the representations made in the June 3 certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter,” the filing asserts.
Following the execution of a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort earlier this month, the former president filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to appoint a special master to examine the materials and filter out any privileged or unrelated documents that were not within the scope of the court-authorized warrant.
Last week, Judge Aileen Cannon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida asked the Justice Department to explain its view of Trump’s request, setting a deadline of Tuesday for the government’s response. She also ordered the department to submit a more detailed list specifying all property seized during its execution of the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, though that document, also due Tuesday, was to be filed under seal.
In an order issued Saturday, before the Justice Department responded to Trump’s motion, Cannon gave notice of her “preliminary intent” to appoint a special master, though her decision was not final. A hearing on Trump’s request is set for Thursday afternoon.
On Monday, prosecutors said in a separate court filing that investigators had already completed their search for potentially privileged information and found a “limited” set of documents that might be considered protected under attorney-client privilege.
For his part, the former president has denied wrongdoing and claimed without evidence that the investigation is a politically motivated attack as he prepares for a possible presidential run in 2024.
Rosamond Press 