Good morning on Cat Sabbath: Saturday, August 13, 2022: National Filet Mignon Day, celebrating a cut of beef known for its tenderness but not its flavor.
It’s also National Prosecco Day, National Garage Sale Day, International Lefthanders Day, and World Organ Donation Day. I urge you to sign up for organ donation, which saves lives. It’s not as if you’re going to appear before God without your eyes or kidneys, you know.
Stuff that happened on August 13 includes:
- 1521 – After an extended siege, forces led by Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés capture Tlatoani Cuauhtémoc and conquer the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan.
- 1792 – King Louis XVI of France is formally arrested by the National Tribunal, and declared an enemy of the people.
- 1906 – The all black infantrymen of the U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry Regiment are accused of killing a white bartender and wounding a white police officer in Brownsville, Texas, despite exculpatory evidence; all are later dishonorably discharged. (Their records were later restored to reflect honorable discharges but there were no financial settlements.)
Of course, it took 66 years for the record to be corrected and the discharges changed. The regiment was called “The buffalo soldiers,” and here they are in 1890 in Montana:
- 1954 – Radio Pakistan broadcasts the “Qaumī Tarāna“, the national anthem of Pakistan for the first time.
National anthems, for some reason, tend to be boring and dire. But Pakistan’s isn’t too bad. Here it is, brought to you by Coke!
- 1961 – Cold War: East Germany closes the border between the eastern and western sectors of Berlin to thwart its inhabitants’ attempts to escape to the West, and construction of the Berlin Wall is started. The day is known as Barbed Wire Sunday.
This was really sneaky. As Wikipedia notes,
Under extreme secrecy, East German troops arrived at certain points to unload concrete, barbed wire, shovels, stone blocks and more. Stasi agents were stationed throughout major intersections between the Soviet and Western sectors of Germany.
Around 4 a.m., radio reports of commotion in the streets were being broadcast in West Berlin. By 4 p.m., half a million Berliners from both the West and East congregated around the sector. While police in West Berlin held back West Berliners who were calling for action, police in East Berlin were keeping its people away from the construction.
Here’s a short video of the closing of the border on August 13 and some Germans escaping at the last minute:
- 1964 – Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans are hanged for the murder of John Alan West becoming the last people executed in the United Kingdom.
- 1967 – Two young women became the first fatal victims of grizzly bear attacks in the 57-year history of Montana’s Glacier National Park in separate incidents.
Da Nooz:
*The NYT has a live feed giving updates on the condition of Salman Rushdie, who was stabbed several times yesterday while giving a talk in New York.I’ll update this on Saturday morning, but the news is cautiously hopeful. UPDATE: I’ll have a separate post on his condition, which is not good.
Mr. Rushdie was taken by helicopter to a local hospital, the state police said in a statement. His condition is not yet known. His agent, Andrew Wylie, said in an email Friday afternoon that Mr. Rushdie was undergoing surgery.
It was not clear what motivated the attacker.
Linda Abrams, from the Buffalo area, who was sitting on the front row, said the assailant kept trying to attack Mr. Rushdie even after he was restrained. “It took like five men to pull him away and he was still stabbing,” she said. “He was just furious, furious. Like intensely strong and just fast.”
Rita Landman, an endocrinologist who was in the audience, said that Mr. Rushdie had multiple stab wounds, including one to the right side of his neck, and that there was a pool of blood under his body. But she said he appeared to be alive. “People were saying, ‘He has a pulse, he has a pulse, he has a pulse,’” Ms. Landman said.
Given that Rushdie is an atheist, this is ironic:
The Chautauqua Institution said on Twitter that it was asking for “your prayers for Salman Rushdie and Henry Reese.” Mr. Reese, the moderator of the morning’s discussion, co-founded a program for exiled writers.
Apparently Rushdie’s personal protection lasted only a decade, and the NYT reports that security at the Chautaqua Institution is “light”.
More irony:
[Rushde] was there for a discussion about the United States as a safe haven for exiled writers and other artists who are under the threat of persecution. The conversation was scheduled to be moderated by Mr. Reese, the co-founder of a Pittsburgh nonprofit, City of Asylum, which is a residency program for exiled writers.
Mr. Rushdie had just sat down and was being introduced when the assailant rushed the stage and assaulted him.
It’s horrible to think that someone who offends anyone else, whether it involves religion or not, would have to live in fear until they die. Rushdie lost his fear eventually, but perhaps his life as well.
*According to a Wall Street Journal report picked up by other papers, some of the documents found in the FBI raid on Trump’s Florida home were not only classified, but marked “top secret”. Trump claims he can wave his pudgy hand over a document and miraculously de-classify it, but I don’t think that’s true.
FBI agents who searched former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home Monday removed 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked as top secret and meant to be only available in special government facilities, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation agents took around 20 boxes of items, binders of photos, a handwritten note and the executive grant of clemency for Mr. Trump’s ally Roger Stone, a list of items removed from the property shows. Also included in the list was information about the “President of France,” according to the three-page list. The list is contained in a seven-page document that also includes the warrant to search the premises which was granted by a federal magistrate judge in Florida.
The list includes references to one set of documents marked as “Various classified/TS/SCI documents,” an abbreviation that refers to top-secret/sensitive compartmented information. It also says agents collected four sets of top secret documents, three sets of secret documents, and three sets of confidential documents. The list didn’t provide any more details about the substance of the documents.
As for declassifying documents, it’s no surprise that Trump didn’t go through the procedure:
While a president has the power to declassify documents, federal regulations lay out a process for doing so. Those rules must be followed for a declassification to become legally effective, said Dan Meyer, a national-security lawyer at Tully Rinckey in Washington.
Once Mr. Trump left office on Jan. 20, 2021, he became bound by the same rules as other private citizens, Mr. Meyer said.
Finally, here’s what the warrant was about:
The warrant said investigators were seeking all records that could be evidence of violations of laws governing the gathering, transmitting or losing of classified information; the removal of official government records; and the destruction of records in a federal investigation.
*Have a look at Nellie Bowles’s weekly news summary on Bari Weiss’s site, this one called “TGIF: Dark Brandon Edition.” About the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, Bowles says this:
In times like these, Matt Taibbi is unparalleled, and I highly recommend his essay on the raid.
The subheader of Taibbi’s essay is “The FBI really better have something “pulverizing” on Trump, because otherwise we’ve just witnessed one of the dumbest moves in the history of politics.” That’s probably a correct assessment.
Also from Bowles:
→ In Sunni v. Shiite violence, which one is the white supremacist? When four Muslim men were murdered in Albuquerque by an alleged serial killer who drove a dark grey sedan, everyone assumed the killer was some white supremacist. Biden came out to say: “My administration stands strongly with the Muslim community. … These hateful attacks have no place in America.” Turns out, the guy arrested and charged with so far two of the killings is a Sunni Muslim, and he may have been partly motivated by anger that his daughter married a Shiite Muslim. Yes, it’s true: Violence also exists outside of Western culture.
→ Speaking of censorship: Good progressives in England have removed Colson Whitehead’s “The Underground Railroad” from university reading lists. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2017, which doesn’t say that much necessarily but I add my vote that it’s phenomenal. Why remove it? It has graphic depictions of slavery. Those depictions might upset people. It’s unclear how people are supposed to learn about something terrible like slavery without being upset, but perhaps Mr. Whitehead should consider a gentler sort of Goodnight Moon rendition for the delicate souls in ivory towers.
Finally, I couldn’t resist adding this one:
Meanwhile, in America, Boston Children’s Hospital was advertising a video called: “What happens during a gender affirming hysterectomy?” The video was made private (ie: no one can watch it) after critics noticed it, but you can still watch it here.
Boston Children’s Hospital (@BostonChildrens) is now offering “gender affirming hysterectomies” for young girls pic.twitter.com/JOH5fFtGJ0
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 11, 2022
I guess this relentlessly upbeat narrator is showing “affirmation.” Colin Wright was quoted on this in Andrew Sullivan’s latest Weekly Dish:
“Since exposing the Boston Children’s Hospital’s videos on ‘Gender-Affirming Hysterectomies’ and other procedures, 41 of their 90 videos have been set to private. What are they trying to hide? If the videos are simply giving valuable health info, why scramble to remove them?” – Colin Wright.
*If you haven’t been vaccinated for polio, I’d ask your doctor if now might be a good time. That’s because the polio virus has been found in New York City waste water for the first time in yonks. From the AP:
The virus that causes polio has been found in New York City’s wastewater in another sign that the disease, which hadn’t been seen in the U.S. in a decade, is quietly spreading among unvaccinated people, health officials said Friday.
The presence of the poliovirus in the city’s wastewater suggests likely local circulation of the virus, health authorities from the city, New York state and the federal government said.
The authorities urged parents to get their children vaccinated against the potentially deadly disease.
“The risk to New Yorkers is real but the defense is so simple — get vaccinated against polio,” New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan said. “With polio circulating in our communities there is simply nothing more essential than vaccinating our children to protect them from this virus, and if you’re an unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated adult, please choose now to get the vaccine. Polio is entirely preventable and its reappearance should be a call to action for all of us.”
Believe me, I’ve read a lot about polio (I went through a period of reading about the development of the Sabin and Salk vaccines), and you do NOT want to get it. As always, consult your doctor.
*Speaking of Taibbi’s essay mentioned above, there’s a similar one by David Brooks in yesterday’s NYT: “Did the FBI just re-elect Donald Trump?” And Brooks’s answer seems to be “Well, it sure looks like it.”
The investigation into Trump was seen purely as a heinous Regime plot. At least for now, the search has shaken the Republican political landscape. Several weeks ago, about half of Republican voters were ready to move on from Trump, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll. This week the entire party seemed to rally behind him. Republican strategists advising Trump’s potential primary opponents had reason to be despondent. “Completely handed him a lifeline,” one such strategist told Politico. “Unbelievable … It put everybody in the wagon for Trump again. It’s just taken the wind out of everybody’s sails.”
According to a Trafalgar Group/Convention of States Action survey, 83 percent of likely Republican voters said the F.B.I. search made them more motivated to vote in the 2022 elections. Over 75 percent of likely Republican voters believed Trump’s political enemies were behind the search rather than the impartial justice system, as did 48 percent of likely general election voters overall.
In a normal society, when politicians get investigated or charged, it hurts them politically. But that no longer applies to the G.O.P. The judicial system may be colliding with the political system in an unprecedented way.
But of course Brooks realizes that we can’t let Trump off the hook just because investigating him for crimes angers Republicans. To do that would send a message that some people are against the law. I think Merrick Garland did what he had to do to fulfill his job, and Republican petulance be damned. Even Brooks can’t reconcile justice with Republican fervor for a madman:
My impression is that the F.B.I. had legitimate reasons to do what it did. My guess is it will find some damning documents that will do nothing to weaken Trump’s support. I’m also convinced that, at least for now, it has unintentionally improved Trump’s re-election chances. It has unintentionally made life harder for Trump’s potential primary challengers and motivated his base.
It feels as though we’re walking toward some sort of storm and there’s no honorable way to alter our course.
In situations like this, I always think of the immortal words of Davy Crockett:
I leave this rule for others when I’m dead
Be always sure you’re right — THEN GO AHEAD!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is nervous:
Hili: There is a snail outside the window.A: So what?Hili: Don’t let it in.
Hili: Za oknem jest ślimak.Ja: No to co?Hili: Nie wpuszczaj go do domu.
************
From Stash Krod. Where can I get one of these?
From John:
From Stephen:
From Titania, a new version of Joan of Arc:
Joan of Arc was strong, courageous and independent, and so was clearly non-binary or trans.
A female Joan of Arc would have been too busy knitting, gossiping and shopping for shoes to fight the English.#Feminism https://t.co/OsV9JkPPGb
— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) August 12, 2022
They love it!
Backyard pool party 🥺💦 pic.twitter.com/6SVbsAguJ3
— why you should have a duck 🦆 (@shouldhaveaduck) August 11, 2022
This is hilarious—and true! (From Luana):
The thing I love about this 1972 George McGovern pin is that fifty years later no modern Democrat would dare replicate it. pic.twitter.com/RbxH0qmk94
— Hunter DeRensis (@HunterDeRensis) August 11, 2022
From Simon: one of the classic cases of mimicry. The mantid hides in an orchid (looking just like it) and waits for the pollinators to arrive. . . .
Orchid Mantis. 🌷🦗🌸pic.twitter.com/8lR91T4Cgh
— Cosmic Gaia (@CosmicGaiaX) August 11, 2022
From Malcolm. News stations and news sites really need better fact-checking:
How misinformation spreads through liberal networks:
1. Pediatrics publishes study claiming there are 3 studies showing trans kids interpret "sex" to mean biosex
2. None of them do
3. At NBC News @JoYurcaba links to all three w/o reading them, amplifying the false claim
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) August 10, 2022
From the Auschwitz Memorial, a French criminal (apparently not Jewish) who lasted a month:
13 August 1897 | A Frenchman, Claude Cellier, was born in Messimy.
In #Auschwitz from 8 July 1942.
No. 45246 (criminal prisoner)
He perished in the camp on 10 August 1942. pic.twitter.com/f3s0njvzgE— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) August 13, 2022
Tweets from His Honor Dr. Cobb. Matthew calls this “an amazing thread of fear and craziness”, but I was caught up in it too–disinfecting my groceries when I brought them home. Remember that? Look what people are wearing for masks!
March 2020, people were losing their minds pic.twitter.com/DYBL8WWtMM
— Samantha (@itssamanthaaaa_) August 10, 2022
Duck pwns cat.But is that duck eating TUNA??
— Ink Blot (@inkblotio) August 10, 2022
The title of Matt Taibbi’s post is “Welcome to the Third World.” It makes me wonder if he is a Trump operative. Regardless of the content of the post, the title implies that Attorney General Merrick Garland somehow acted outside the scope of the law as if he was a third world dictator. There isn’t a shred of evidence that this is the case. To the contrary, everything we know about Garland is that he is a person of the highest integrity, rigorously follows the law, and is dedicated to the preservation of democracy.
Now that the search warrant and receipt of items taken have been made public, the most pressing unanswered question is what did Trump do or plan to do with the documents? Was he planning to sell the top secret documents or has he already do so? Certainly, he didn’t take them as merely souvenirs or as source materials for a future ghostwritten memoir. Until we know for sure why the documents were taken and what, if anything was done with them, we have to assume Trump has jeopardized national security. This is why the search warrant indicated that Trump may violated the Espionage Act.
Taibbi is regularly attacked for standing up for bi-partisan principals. It seems to be pretty common nowadays for people to think that justice should be partisan.
“…what did Trump do or plan to do with the documents?”
My guess? Protection, leverage or extortion.
Or it could be as simple as unbridled petulance at losing the election.
From what I have been able to figure out, most of what he had was the normal sorts of things that one might retain after a high profile job, like the photo albums.
The target of the raid was likely records of the true depth and identities of the individuals involved in the shady efforts to destroy him. That required coordination between entities such as the FBI, the Clinton campaign, and left a paper trail. Trump had declassified groups of such documents, but it was up to other agencies to redact personal or sensitive information prior to their public release. of course, there was always an ongoing related investigation as an excuse to not release them quite yet, which persisted to the end of his presidency.
If he is holding documents that are strong evidence of potential criminal activity during the various actions and impeachments directed at him, as well as information that clears him of the acts which he has been accused of, then he would be wise to keep the documents secure and close until they see public release.
Losing the documents could have them ending up in a colossal warehouse after being looked at by “top men”, or going straight into the incinerator.
On the other side, someone who might be implicated in crimes by such documents would probably be willing to do some fairly shady stuff to ensure that they never see public release. Plus, the terms of the search are so wide, they can harass him by taking every government or presidential document generated during his years in office. and get some insight into how Trump and the GOP are strategizing for the mid terms and 2024.
From what you’ve been able to figure out? Pray, tell us how you “figured this out.”
Did Trump declassify these documents, like the pope blessing the crowd in St. Peter’s square by waiving his hand from the balcony of the basilica, before or after the documents were planted by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago? This ipso-facto-declassification-by-taking is Trump’s third line of defense so far this week, after first claiming that there were no documents subject to the Presidential Records Act at Mar-a-Lago and then that any classified documents found there were planted by the FBI.
After the Mar-a-Lago search warrant was unsealed, Trump issued a statement on his Twitter knockoff, Truth Social, in which he deftly reminded everyone that Barack Obama’s middle name is “Hussein.” So, total exoneration, amirite?
Nellie Bowles’ comments on the increased funding to the IRS that has been authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act represent appalling ignorance or outright Trumplike lying. She says this about an IRS job announcement: The IRS gets a huge new slush fund. And it looks like they’re going to be armed and ready to kill?! Is the IRS allowed to do that? I guess yes! Here is one of the new IRS job listings.” The job announcement is for IRS Criminal Investigation Special Agent. A Special Agent is the equivalent of an FBI special agent. They are law enforcement officials that accompany non-armed IRS agents who when interacting with taxpayers face the possibility of violence. I know this from personal experience. They are indispensable for the enforcement of tax laws. Special Agents compose an extremely tiny percentage of the workforce. The vast, vast majority carry no weapons. Bowles’ misrepresentations and distortions made by blood boil. All IRS employees carry out an essential task, made more difficult by the loathsome attacks by people like Bowles.
> A female Joan of Arc would have been too busy knitting, gossiping and shopping for shoes to fight the English.
I LOVE the Titania line! This is precisely why I want to embrace a post-gender society. Too many people consider themselves trans because they want to embrace the cultural stereotypes of another gender, rather than realizing that we should scrap the construct entirely. A friend considers *self trans for wanting to engage in stereotypically masculine activities like mowing the lawn. That has nothing to do with gender or genitalia!
It is a very popular myth that Cortez burned his ships when he landed in Mexico. The truth is that he had his men dismantle the ships. The striking thing is that when it came time to attack the lake city Tenochtitlan, he used the materials from his ships to create rafts to cross the water.
That McGovern button is awesome. It should be resurrected.
Cortez also had many allies among the native tribes that were oppressed by the Aztecs.
Even though 2022 is the 500th anniversary of the conquest I don’t think there were
many celebrations in Mexico.
The Aztecs themselves were an imperialist power that invaded the lands they occupied (from the North I believe). Their local enemies thought they were using Cortez and his men to overthrow them.
Regardless of their technological advantage, Cortez could not have overwhelmed the Aztec nation without help.
I was puzzled about the McGovern campaign button. But among the Democratic candidates in the primaries there were two female candidates. So … wow.
Actually, I don’t think the McGovern campaign button had much to do with Shirley Chisholm or any other woman having been a primary candidate for the Democratic nomination. I think it was a reaction to the perception, common among left-of-center Democrats, that in the previous election — Nixon vs. Humphrey in 1968 — there really hadn’t been much in the way of a meaningful difference between the candidates.
Earlier in his political career Hubert Humphrey had been something of a liberal firebrand. (Humphrey had initially come to national prominence as the young mayor of Minneapolis by giving a stemwinding speech in favor of a strong civil-rights plank in the party platform at the 1948 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia — a speech that caused Strom Thurmond and other Southern Democrats to walk out of the convention and eventually to form their own third-party, the segregationist “Dixiecrats.”)
By 1968, however, Humphrey, then the vice-president, was seen as the quintessential big-city machine political hack. And, despite some faltering efforts, he had a hard time distinguishing himself from Lydon Johnson on the overriding issue of the day — the Vietnam War. (It also didn’t help that LBJ would brag in private about having “Hubert’s testicles in my watch pocket.”) Thus, there appeared to be little difference between Humphrey and the GOP’s Nixon, and many liberal voters decided to sit out the ’68 election or to cast a protest vote for third-party candidates like comedian Dick Gregory.
In 1972, by contrast, George McGovern had clearly established himself as the peace candidate, promising to withdraw US troops from Southeast Asia immediately after his inauguration. McGovern also staked out progressive positions on a number of other social issues (allowing Nixon’s political henchmen to label him the candidate of “acid, amnesty, and abortion”).
The gist of the campaign button above was to attract the liberal wing back into the Democratic fold by highlighting that this time around, unlike 1968, there really was a clear distinction between the candidates.
Regarding the Mar-a-Lago cache, I endorse these two takes:
Stonekettle Station
https://www.stonekettle.com/2022/08/loose-lips-sink-ships.html?m=1
The Shovel
https://www.theshovel.com.au/2022/08/10/the-shovels-view-on-the-fbis-raid-on-donald-trumps-home/
If Trump goes to jail, it opens the door for every lying, corrupt, perverted piece of shit to go to jail too. Is that what we want?
🤣
I hope Sir Salman not only survives, but is able to continue to laugh at and confound his enemies, for they are our enemies too. It’s not very often that I see red and want to start a war, but this kind of thing stirs something irrational and atavistic in me.
Related thought: wouldn’t it have been wonderful to be a fly on the wall at those boozy lunches when Hitch, Rushdie, Amis and McEwen got together for an argument?
What is sometimes forgotten about the Brownsville incident is that the regiment of Black soldiers were dismissed by President Theodore Roosevelt, perhaps the most shameful incident of his presidency. The Theodore Roosevelt Center says this:
—————-
“The Brownsville Incident (1906) occurred in Brownsville, a town in south Texas, where, on August 13, 1906, a race-related fracas occurred that resulted in the wounding of one white civilian and the death of another. White townspeople blamed the African-American soldiers of the 25th Infantry recently stationed at nearby Fort Brown. President Theodore Roosevelt discharged without honor the entire regiment of 167 men, despite the fact that all the soldiers asserted their innocence. Roosevelt did not expel the white officers, who attested that the soldiers had been in their barracks at the time of the melee in town. No military trial was ever held. A Texas court cleared the soldiers of wrongdoing. Roosevelt nevertheless sided with the white citizens of Brownsville who swore the soldiers were guilty. He sent investigators to assess the events of August 13, but his mind was already made up. The report, dated February 7, 1909, reinforced the stories of the civilians and found the regiment to be at fault.”
“Roosevelt’s dismissal of the innocent soldiers is usually considered his worst mistake as president. The men lost their careers, salaries, pensions, and military honors. Roosevelt faced criticism from many sectors, but never backed down, changed his mind, or apologized. “
https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Learn-About-TR/TR-Encyclopedia/Race-Ethnicity-and-Gender/The-Brownsville-Incident
————————-
The incident reflected the rampant racism of the times.
I spent a good deal of my career dealing with classified information and documents, which also meant endless briefings on procedures for their handling and disclosure, stressing particularly what penalties I could face for even accidentally violating those rules.
One fact that never changed was that POTUS has plenary power over document classification, which cannot be restrained by other branches of government,and which would include requirements that he fill out particular forms or that congress can impose limits or set procedures he must follow. There is a flow of power regarding the process, and it originates with POTUS.
I think the “Nuclear Secrets” angle has it’s origin in a few reporters hopefully believing that “Navy v. Egan” provides limits on the plenary powers regarding that specific topic, although it does not seem that the case actually makes that conclusion.
So yes, if JFK is talking to a group of soldiers who are going to be sent into the DDR to extract a German scientist and his family, he can show those soldiers any of the intelligence information he wants to show them. He does not need to fill out some form, and the soldiers need not receive extra security screening. JFK has plenary power to show any document to anyone he chooses.
I guess we will see how this plays out, but if the target here is actually Trump, there is going to be a lot of new ground covered in what would likely be lengthy litigation. I suspect that if the democrats were optimistic about this, they would not have isolated Biden from the process, or gone through a questionable magistrate in Florida for the warrant.
Re “So yes, if JFK is talking to a group of soldiers who are going to be sent into the DDR to extract a German scientist and his family, he can show those soldiers any of the intelligence information he wants to show them. He does not need to fill out some form, and the soldiers need not receive extra security screening.”
The amazing thing is that you really seem to believe that this has some sort of relevance with regard to the present situation with the FPOTUS.
One of the crimes for which the Mar-a-Lago search warrant application established probable cause is the Espionage Act, 18 USC section 793. That statute, among other things, prohibits “information respecting the national defense” — whether classified or not — from being used “to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation[.]”
If Donald Trump believes he has a legitimate possessory interest in the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago and that those documents were seized in contravention of his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, Trump has standing (expressly conferred upon him by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(g)) to file a motion for return of property and to seek the unsealing of the search warrant application including the sworn affidavit establishing probable cause in support thereof.
If Trump believes that he has broken no laws with respect to the documents, and that the affidavit submitted by the feds is insufficient and pretextual, I should think he would hasten to file such a motion to have the affidavit unsealed and to clear his good name. But I doubt Trump has the stones to draw blind against whatever cards the feds are holding in the probable-cause affidavit, particularly given the reporting that there is someone inside Trumpworld at Mar-a-Lago who has cooperated with the government by furnishing information regarding just what Trump was up to with the documents he brought with him to Mar-a-Lago in contravention of the Presidential Records Act.
i’m confused here, Ken. The search warrant is wisely worded to make moot Trump’s argument that he can declassify any document he chooses. Says the warrant, you’re not legally allowed to have these documents no matter who declassified them, because you’re not the POTUS anymore. Is that really contestable?
Comments here and elsewhere seem to be going back and forth over whether the documents are “really” declassified and whether Trump’s private residence is secure enough to house them, and that this bears on the validity of the warrant. But surely that’s beside the point, a distraction, I suppose.
Let’s say the police execute a search warrant on my house. If they search under the Criminal Code offence of theft, it could state they are looking for my neighbour’s missing lawn mower. If I have a receipt for the mower from my neighbour, I have a right to keep it because no theft occurred (assuming the neighbour didn’t steal it himself.) But if they search under the Narcotics Act for heroin, my production of a receipt from the importer doesn’t get me off the hook.
Jerry alluded to this in his original post but many seem to have missed it.
Under the Presidential Records Act. 44 USC chapter 22, the records generated by a US presidential administration belong to the US people, via the National Archives, not to the individual president whose administration generated them. Accordingly, Donald Trump was not entitled to have any of the records seized from Mar-a-Lago in his possession.
Whether the improper possession of such records constitutes a crime, and, if so, the severity of the crime, depends upon the nature of the records and what was done with them. The warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago states that there is probable cause to believe that three criminal statutes have been violated (and to believe that evidence of these criminal offenses will be found at Mar-a-Lago) — 18 USC sections 793, 1509, and 2071. These statutes are, respectively, the Espionage Act, the act prohibiting the obstruction of court orders (in this case, obstruction of the subpoena for the production of the records previously served upon Donald Trump), and the act prohibiting the concealment, removal, or mutilation of such records. None of these statutes requires that the records at issue have a security classification.
So you are correct, Leslie, that questions regarding the security classification of the records seized from Mar-a-Lago are a red herring. It is, perhaps, an understandable red herring for at least two reasons. First, because there are separate criminal statutes (not alleged in the search warrant) that prohibit the mishandling of classified information, 18 USC sections 698 and 1824. (These are the statutes that Hillary Clinton was under investigation in 2016 for violating with regard to her use of a private email server — the conduct for which Donald Trump and his cronies led the chants of “Lock her up!” during the 2016 campaign.) Second, the security classification that the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago have (or had, assuming Donald Trump actually declassified them) indirectly reflects the gravity of the threat to national security posed by the violation of the statutes that are actually cited in the search warrant.
I hope this brings a bit of clarity to this issue without dragging it too far into the legal weeds.
Thanks very much, Ken. It’s hard to get one’s head around the magnitude of what may have happened here and I appreciate the explanation and clarification.
A wise man once said that, if you are innocent, why would you plead the Fifth? That’s all I need to know that Donald Tr*mp is guilty of something.
As for Tr*mp’s alleged declassification of the documents: presumably, this will be his defence in a court of law (if it gets that far). I think he’ll have to show he did actually declassify the documents while he was president.
There must be a breaking point somewhere. When the enormity (well, at present only suspected enormity) of the documents seized becomes known, there must be a breaking point in the support for Trump, I’d say. Let us hope it happens before November.
It happened with Nixon, although I guess with the greater polarisation now the breaking point lies much further*.
It is unprecedented that the FBI raids the residence of a former POTUS, but then, it is unprecedented (AFAIK) that an outgoing POTUS pilfers boxes and boxes of confidential documents too.
*I’m kinda convinced that point would already have been reached, if it were not for the trans-madness, the over the top CRT and the un-clarity on border control.
If Dick Nixon had Fox News and the rest of the right-wing propaganda machine, he would’ve never had to resign over Watergate.
Hell, if Nixon had Fox News and the other right-wing propaganda outlets, he might well have been coronated king after his landslide 60%+, 49-state, 500+ electoral vote victory in the 1972 presidential election.
Perhaps this experience when he was an advisor to Nixon put the gleam in Roger Ailes’s eyes for the founding of the aforementioned Faux News.
Yes, it undoubtably did, according to the 2014 biography of Ailes, The Loudest Voice in the Room, written by Gabe Sherman.
I know you come from a country that dumped its monarchy two and a half centuries ago, so you are not familiar with the technical language, but the word is “crowned”. You are crowned king.
Very much 🙂
“There must be a breaking point somewhere. . .in the support for Trump”
I hear you, but I also hear a Trump supporter, in response to the raid, complaining “There must be a breaking point somewhere in the persecution of Trump.”
Sadly, 1) you can’t hear that Trump supporter and he can’t hear you and 2) in both cases, there apparently is no breaking point.
Pretty sure I read a book decades ago suggesting Joan of Arc had some sort of gynaecological/androgynous condition… “Operation Shepherdess” – but cannot really remember the full story they allege happened…
I drove through Glacier NP on August 12-13 1967, whilst collecting beetles for my MS. I remember a close encounter with a black bear on a west-side trail, a hike above Many Glacier Lake on the east — which brought me within a couple of miles of one of the victims that evening. And the campground where I was staying abruptly closed with little explanation the next morning. I never went back..