Posted on 09/20/2022 9:01:31 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
In early September, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon approved Trump’s request for a special master to oversee the review of all the evidence seized in the raid and also temporarily blocked parts of the DOJ investigation pending the appointment of the special master. She ultimately appointed Judge Raymond Dearie as the special master to review the details and legality of the raid on Trump’s private Florida estate.
Judge Cannon had ruled against a DOJ request to delay the proceedings and continue to look at the documents separately from the special master.
During the raid, passports belonging to former President Trump were seized. Trump immediately objected publicly to the seizure of his personal property, and the passports were returned in a few days.
Although many items were taken in the raid some particular documents are special attention.
Seized in the raid were documents that reportedly are labeled “classified”.
The implication is that former President Trump has classified material at his home, and that he was in error to have the stated documents.
The former president has repeatedly stated publicly that he himself declassified the documents before leaving the Oval Office and that the stated documents, like other materials in the same room, were slated for his upcoming presidential museum.
Former President Trump has further stated that the Biden FBI has previously visited Mar-a-Lago and the room where the documents were stored to observe the placement of the boxes, and only offered a request that an extra lock be placed on the door to the room.
Trump complied with this offer and had the lock installed.
So there was no secret between Trump and the FBI about what was in the room and Trump was open and and compliant with the government representatives.
Thus far the status of the questioned documents has not been stated in filings to clear up the matter.
The Special Master draft plan sets out a number of requirements, including that Trump’s team provide details about Trump’s claim to have “declassified” documents that were seized during the FBI in the search of Mar-a-Lago.
Former President Donald Trump‘s legal team on Monday night resisted the request set forth by Special Master Judge Raymond Dearie in order to preserve a defense against a “subsequent indictment.”
The request was for the team to elaborate on their assertation that Trump has declassified the documents.
The Hill reports:
In a filing to the court-appointed special master that Tump requested, his attorneys said the “time and place” for making such a disclosure would come in a motion in a criminal trial as an effort to recover his property.
‘Otherwise, the Special Master process will have forced the Plaintiff to fully and specifically disclose a defense to the merits of any subsequent indictment without such a requirement being evident in the District Court’s order,” trump’s legal team wrote.
“The government’s stance assumes that if a document has a classification marking, it remains classified irrespective of any actions taken during President Trump’s term in office,” the team’s filing stated.
“There is no legitimate contention that the chief executive’s declassification of documents requires approval of bureaucratic components of the executive branch,” they added.
The former president’s team sees a legal problem with releasing such information too soon, and seeks to release it at the proper legal time.
According to a letter filed by Trump’s legal team, they won’t comply because they say it would weaken their case against a “subsequent indictment”:
[T]he Draft Plan requires that the Plaintiff disclose specific information regarding declassification to the Court and to the Government. We respectfully submit that the time and place for affidavits or declarations would be in connection with a Rule 41 motion that specifically alleges declassification as a component of its argument for return of property. Otherwise, the Special Master process will have forced the Plaintiff to fully and specifically disclose a defense to the merits of any subsequent indictment without such a requirement being evident in the District Court’s order.
In an effort to push forward the release of the information, the Justice Department next filed:
“Plaintiff principally seeks to raise questions about the classification status of the records and their categorization under the Presidential Records Act (‘PRA’). But plaintiff does not actually assert – much less provide any evidence – that any of the seized records bearing classification markings have been declassified,” the department wrote.
“Such possibilities should not be given weight absent the plaintiff’s putting forward competent evidence,” it added.
New York Times correspondent and Trumpworld pulse-reader Maggie Haberman suggested that Trump’s team was disappointed with the request.
“It’s very possible that Trump’s team – which liked that Dearie is slow-moving and believed he would think just like they do and base decisions on distrust of the FBI – was projecting,” Haberman speculated.
Trump himself is stating no problem with the protocols unfolding, but posted this week, “The 4th Ammendment, and much more, has been totally violated, a grave invasion of privacy.”
What a friggin mess. The treason in this government runs from the bottom to the top.
I’m not quite grasping the, uh, nuances of the argument being made by Trump’s lawyers, and I don’t think the Special Master will either. They claim the documents are all declassified, but won’t state how/why/when because...reasons?
More like Trump world class HATER...
I don’t trust media interpretations.
I also distrust the competency of the Trump lawyers.
Trump and his representatives have said he declassified all this stuff.
Seems pretty straight forward to ask, ok when and how?
If they can’t answer, I’m sure the Matter will assume for now they are classified. That will give the government a reason to keep them.
Maybe he declassified them maybe he didn’t. If he didn’t it would have been better to never make the claim.
The problem with judges is they all used to be lawyers. Most of them would sell their mothers for a dime.
My guess is a 5th amendment protection against self-incrimination.
The Special Master is asking for President Trump to "provide details about Trump’s claim to have “declassified” documents that were seized during the FBI in the search of Mar-a-Lago." Any details that President Trump divulges will be used against him in a future indictment.
The Trump team wants the DoJ to build its case against Trump independently without President Trump leaving breadcrumbs for them to follow. They want the DoJ to prove that President Trump illegally possessed those documents. Do they have proof that those documents were still classified?
I know this sounds like the government is in the position of having to prove a negative, that the documents were not declassified, but the burden is on them to make the case that President Trump that he's guilty, not on President Trump to prove that he's innocent.
Therefore, the so-called Trump Team is holding their cards close to their vest and waiting for an indictment before revealing their facts. I'd think they believe they are forced to this extreme measure because the DoJ is compromised by bias and a perceived existential threat and Trump won't get a fair treatment with them.
-PJ
How can you prove you declassified what you don’t know they have? Since when does an American have to prove their innocence? The government needs to prove he didn’t declassify.
Any docs removed by the President are automatically declassified, that is the point that needs to be made.
Boy they are really fighting to prevent Americans of seeing a conspiracy of Senators, Media, CIA, FBI of spying on a Presidential candidate for the sole purpose of destroying him.
Yes but it kind of begs the question, what does the Trump team want the special matter to do?
If they want the Master to return the documents, or deny the government’s use of them, they will have to make some kind of showing.
Maybe they just want attorney or executive privileged documents back.
Probably the Master’s work will be done quickly.
RE: Any docs removed by the President are automatically declassified
I keep reading this from no other place but here in FR, but I don’t see this being acknowledged anywhere else.
However, It looks to me like Declassifying a classified document requires FORMAL STEPS and PROCEDURES to be followed so that there is documentation that declassification was indeed done.
I don’t know the right of it but I bet it would be easy to convince a jury of indy-lib people that it was so.
That steps were not followed...
Any bureaucratic evidence of declassification has been under the control of the deep state. They can disappear the the paper trail, the electronic trail, whatever. Disclosing the method and manner to the special master tells them what aisle to clean up.
There’s this from 2017:
https://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2017/170516-president-declassification.htm
It is well worth reading.
“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.”
There isn’t a judge in this nation who isn’t in someone’s back po
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
“The President...may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices...”
Why was that put in the Constitution?
I suspect because somebody like George Washington didn’t want the old-fashioned equivalent of Monday morning quarterbacking.
Only by having documentary evidence that supported his action can a President be safe from unwanted & unjustified politically motivated attacks.
It is both necessary and proper that a former President be able to retain such documents. Politics is among the most vicious of occupations.
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