Donald J. Trump After the White House - Page 14
By Alex Henderson | AlterNetOn Tuesday, September 13, federal Judge Bruce Reinhart unsealed additional parts of the affidavit that was used as the basis for the FBI’s August 8 search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach, Florida. Although a heavily redacted version of the affidavit had been released in August, attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) pushed for more parts of the affidavit to be unsealed — and on September 13, they were. New details in the affidavit that have been made publicly available, legal experts allege, indicate that Trump may have made false or misleading statements to his attorneys — who repeated them to DOJ officials.Business Insider’s Tom Porter reports, “According to the newly-released information, one Trump attorney told the DOJ ‘he was not advised there were any records in any private office space or other locations in Mar-a-Lago.’ A lawyer for Trump, Christina Bobb, also signed a statement saying that all of the information requested by the government had been handed back. That information turned out to be false. When agents executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago on August 8, they found stashes of highly confidential records, including in Trump's offices, haphazardly kept alongside his personal items. Analysts say the new evidence indicates Trump himself was likely behind the attorney’s false claims.”
Feds claim there are no documents on record that apply to a so-called Trump 'declassification order'By Sarah K. Burris | Raw StoryFormer President Donald Trump and his allies have claimed multiple times that there was a kind of "declassification order" on many of the documents that he took from the White House back to his country club in Florida. In an interview with the Fox network, Trump said that while he was in office he "often took documents, including classified documents, to the residence" and "had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken to the residence were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them." Former National Security Adviser John Bolton said that while he was there there was nothing of the sort going on, and that the idea of a standing declassification order is "almost certainly a lie."
CBS NewsThe Senate Judiciary Committee will investigate whether the Justice Department under then-President Donald Trump tried to use the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office to go after Trump's political adversaries. Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat who chairs the Judiciary Committee, called the allegations "astonishing" in a letter he sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland, asking the Justice Department to provide documents related to the allegations.The allegations stem from a new book written by Geoffrey Berman, who as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York was the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan for half of Trump's presidency. He says in his book, "Holding the Line," that he was repeatedly pressured by Justice Department officials to use his office to aid the Trump administration politically, including by investigating former Secretary of State John Kerry. A Republican and Trump-administration appointee, Berman said he walked that "tightrope" for 2 1/2 years before "the rope snapped," the New York Times reported.
Alarmed veterans of the Justice Department said the legal system was entering uncharted territory.By Natasha Bertrand and Daniel LippmanPresident Donald Trump’s post-impeachment acquittal behavior is casting a chill in Washington, with Attorney General William Barr emerging as a key ally in the president’s quest for vengeance against the law enforcement and national security establishment that initiated the Russia and Ukraine investigations. In perhaps the most tumultuous day yet for the Justice Department under Trump, four top prosecutors withdrew on Tuesday from a case involving the president’s longtime friend Roger Stone after senior department officials overrode their sentencing recommendation—a backpedaling that DOJ veterans and legal experts suspect was influenced by Trump’s own displeasure with the prosecutors’ judgment.“With Bill Barr, on an amazing number of occasions … you can be almost 100 percent certain that there’s something improper going on,” said Donald Ayer, the former deputy attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration. The president has only inflamed such suspicions, congratulating Barr on Wednesday for intervening in Stone’s case and teeing off hours later on the prosecutors, calling them “Mueller people” who treated Stone “very badly.” The president said he had not spoken with Barr about the matter, but Ayer called the attorney general’s apparent intervention “really shocking,” because Barr “has now entered into the area of criminal sanction, which is the one area probably more than any other where it’s most important that the Justice Department’s conduct be above reproach and beyond suspicion.”
By Brad Reed | Raw StoryA new book from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman claims that former President Donald Trump planned to blockade himself in the White House and refuse to leave despite his loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. CNN reports that White House aides told Haberman that Trump said multiple times that he would not leave the White House to make way for Biden, even though Trump had lost every court challenge and Biden had been certified as the winner of the election. "I'm just not going to leave," Trump told one aide who spoke with Haberman. "We're never leaving," Trump told a separate aide. "How can you leave when you won an election?
Peter Stone in Washington DCDonald Trump’s non-stop drive to paint the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago to recover classified documents as a political witch hunt is drawing rebukes from ex-justice department and FBI officials who warn such attacks can spur violence and pose a real threat to the physical safety of law enforcement. But the concerns have not deterred Republican House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and other Trump allies from making inflammatory remarks echoing the former US president.The unrelenting attacks by Trump and loyalists such as McCarthy, senator Lindsey Graham, Steve Bannon and false conspiracy theorist Alex Jones against law enforcement have continued despite strong evidence that Trump kept hundreds of classified documents illegally. Before the 8 August raid, Trump and his attorneys stonewalled FBI and US National Archives requests for the return of all classified documents and did not fully comply with a grand jury subpoena in a criminal probe of Trump’s hoarding of government documents. The FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and club recovered 33 boxes with over 100 classified documents, adding to the 200 classified records Trump had earlier returned in response to multiple federal requests.
insider@insider.com (Cheryl Teh)A former FBI official said former President Donald Trump may have wanted to keep top-secret documents about a foreign power because of the astronomical price that country — or its adversaries — might have paid for such information. Former FBI assistant director Frank Figliuzzi was asked by MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Wednesday why Trump would have wanted to keep top-secret documents about a foreign country's nuclear program at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida as was earlier reported by The Washington Post.In response, Figliuzzi posited that the high price of these documents would make them attractive assets to possess. "If I were to be asked what the highest price tag or highest value might be on what kind of classified US government information, certainly among the top of my answers would be: nuclear-related information," he said. He elaborated that such information has "potentially the greatest value" if one were to try to "market it and capitalize" on having such files. "Well, first, a country would give its right arm to learn what the US knew about its nuclear program and capabilities, not only for the obvious reason of, 'Hey, they figured this out,' but also because it would signal what we don't know about their program," Figliuzzi said.
Former intelligence chiefs say national security officials are ‘shaking their heads at what damage might have been done’Julian Borger in WashingtonMar-a-Lago – the Palm Beach resort and residence where Donald Trump reportedly stored nuclear secrets among a trove of highly classified documents for 18 months since leaving the White House – is a magnet for foreign spies, former intelligence officials have warned. The Washington Post reported that a document describing an unspecified foreign government’s defences, including its nuclear capabilities, was one of the many highly secret papers Trump took away from the White House when he left office in January 2021.There were also documents marked SAP, for Special-Access Programmes, which are often about US intelligence operations and whose circulation is severely restricted, even among administration officials with top security clearance. Potentially most disturbing of all, there were papers stamped HCS, Humint Control Systems, involving human intelligence gathered from agents in enemy countries, whose lives would be in danger if their identities were compromised.
bdawson@insider.com (Bethany Dawson)A 2020 video clip of Donald Trump calling Democrats "fascists" has resurfaced on social media.bdawson@insider.com (Bethany Dawson)The video, which has gone viral on Twitter, shows the former president speaking at Mankato regional airport, Minnesota, in August 2020 when he was on the presidential campaign trail. He tells his supporters that Democrats are "fascists," saying they want to "destroy our second amendment, attack the right to life, and replace American freedom with left-wing fascism. Fascists, they are fascists."
kgallagher@insider.com (Kayla Gallagher)As commander-in-chief, Donald Trump didn't have an appetite for secret weapons programs or intelligence reports of extraterrestrial life. He was more intrigued with his own personal relations to world leaders and presidential assassinations, the New York Times reported. "Mr. Trump did not care about intelligence reports about U.F.O.s, but he would ask questions about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy," according to the New York Times. The Thursday report said the former president would often quiz intelligence briefers about the power of America's nuclear weapons arsenal.Julian E. Barnes, Michael C. Bender, and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times wrote that Trump was captivated by the affairs of his international colleagues. "With many world leaders, Mr. Trump, whose own dalliances were the stuff of gossip columns for years, was fascinated by what the C.I.A. had learned about his international counterparts' supposed extramarital affairs — not because he was going to confront them with the information, former officials said, but rather because he found it titillating."
Trump is support the insurrectionist and seditious people who attacked and sacked our capitol.Five people — including a Capitol Police officer attacked by rioters — died as a direct result of the events of Jan. 6, 2021By Virginia ChamleeWhile those involved in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol have been widely denounced by politicians on either side of the aisle, as well as condemned by the American justice system, Donald Trump says he would considering pardoning them if elected again. What's more, the former president said this week he is financially supporting some of the rioters. Roughly 850 people have been arrested for crimes related to the 2021 attack. More than 250 of those have been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement.Speaking to radio host Wendy Bell, Trump said that if he runs for president in 2024 and wins, he will "be looking very, very strongly about pardons, full pardons." Reuters reports that elsewhere in the interview, Trump — who has previously declared himself "the president of law and order" — said he is "financially supporting" some of the rioters facing legal consequences due to their involvement, though he did not offer specifics. "I am financially supporting people that are incredible and they were in my office actually two days ago. It's very much on my mind. It's a disgrace what they've done to them," he said.
Besides documents marked top secret and classified, newly unsealed information shows Trump also had a mountain of other documents and photos.By Dareh Gregorian and Ryan J. ReillyIn addition to troves of information marked "secret" and "top secret," the FBI's search of former President Donald Trump's Florida home turned up over 10,000 U.S. government documents and photographs without classification markings, a newly unsealed Justice Department inventory of the seized items shows. The Justice Department court filing, filed under seal earlier this week but unsealed by a judge Friday, also shows investigators found more than 40 empty folders with "classified" banners on them at Mar-a-Lago. It's unclear what happened to the information that had been inside the folders.
Katherine FungLawyers for former President Donald Trump reversed course Thursday, opposing the unsealing of a more detailed list of the items seized during the FBI's Mar-a-Lago search. In its court filing this week, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said it would be OK with the court releasing its more comprehensive list detailing exactly what was found during the August 8 raid by federal investigators. However, Trump's team objected to the document being unsealed, according to former Prosecutor Andrew Weissmann.Thursday's hearing marked the first time Trump's lawyers appeared in court for a proceeding related to the Mar-a-Lago search. While the hearing was not open to the public, several reporters were present in the Florida courtroom. The debate over whether Trump should be granted his request for a special master in the Mar-a-Lago matter is expected to reach a conclusion now that both sides have delivered their arguments to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. On Thursday, Cannon held a closed-door hearing to consider Trump's bid for an outsider to be assigned over the review of documents seized. The judge did not make a ruling from the bench. It is unclear when her written order will come. Legal scholars noted that Trump's team had asked for the detailed inventory to be unsealed in its original motion.
Thursday hearing at West Palm Beach courthouse the latest stage in dispute stemming from FBI search at Trump’s Florida homeEd PilkingtonLawyers for Donald Trump and the Department of Justice were going head to head on Thursday in front of a federal judge in Florida as they fought over whether to appoint a “special master” to review the documents seized by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month. Thursday’s hearing at a federal courthouse in West Palm Beach was the latest stage in the dispute that erupted after Trump’s resort and residence was searched on 8 August. The FBI action, conducted in an active criminal investigation about the alleged harboring of secret documents at Trump’s premises, was the first time a former president has been subject to such an indignity in US history. Judge Aileen Cannon, of the federal district court for the southern district of Florida, was appointed to the bench by Trump himself in 2020. She has indicated that she is inclined to side with the former president and appoint a special master – an outside person, usually a lawyer, who would review the documents to see whether any were covered by privilege and should be returned to Trump. In a filing to the judge on Wednesday, Trump’s legal team called for independent oversight of the justice department’s actions. “The court should task the special master with conducting a review of all of the seized materials … to identify documents subject to attorney-client and/or executive privilege.”
You can take the man off of Twitter, but you can't take the urge to post out of the manNikki McCann RamirezFormer President Donald Trump spent Tuesday morning feverishly sharing content from supporters on his social media platform Truth Social, posting or re-posting more than 60 times since early Tuesday morning, including content from QAnon accounts and the far-right message board 4chan. In the face of a DOJ probe over his post-presidency handling of classified documents, Trump has sought reassurance from his most loyal followers, including accounts like “Patriotic American Alpha Sauce” and “ULTRA-MAGA 4LIFE” who post memes lauding the former president. Trump using Truth Social to push QAnon content isn’t new. Alongside jabs at Biden and prominent Democrats, Trump has amplified QAnon-promoting accounts at least 70 times since joining and actively using Truth Social,” Media Matters Senior Researcher Alex Kaplan tweeted on Monday.
Takeaways from the historic Justice Department court filing on the Mar-a-Lago search
By Jeremy Herb, Marshall Cohen and Tierney Sneed, CNN(CNN) Former President Donald Trump has pushed an "incomplete and inaccurate narrative" in his recent court filings about the Mar-a-Lago search, the Justice Department said in a historic court filing late Tuesday night. Prosecutors fleshed out new details about the ongoing criminal investigation into Trump's potential mishandling of classified documents, which he took from the White House to his resort and home in Florida. Trump and his allies have denied any wrongdoing. In total, the US government has recovered more than 320 classified documents from Mar-a-Lago since January, including more than 100 seized in the August search, DOJ says. The filing is in response to Trump's bid for a "special master" in a civil lawsuit against the Justice Department, weeks after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago. The judge handling the case, a Trump appointee, has said her "preliminary intent" is to bring in a special master. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday.
DOJ alleges 'obstructive conduct' by Trump's legal team
The Justice Department on Tuesday responded to former President Donald Trump's call for a "special master" to review materials the FBI seized at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump's lawyers have said the review is needed to deal with matters they argue may be covered by executive privilege. In their 36-page filing, top department officials laid out in extraordinary detail their efforts to obtain highly classified records they allege were improperly stored at Mar-a-Lago since Trump's departure from the White House, and the resistance -- which they describe outright as obstructive conduct, that they were met with by Trump's representatives in their efforts to have them handed over.
The government included multiple exhibits to support its argument, including one photo purporting to show an FBI photograph of documents recovered from a container in Trump's personal office with colored cover sheets showing classification markings including TOP SECRET/SCI, with one showing a marking that appears to refer to information obtained by confidential human sources. Officials revealed that after they issued a grand jury subpoena to Trump's attorneys on May 11 to obtain all remaining classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, "the government also developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room [at Mar-a-Lago] and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government's investigation," according to the filing.
By Matthew Chapman | Raw StoryOn Tuesday, Politico reported that Republicans feel boxed in by their constant efforts to defend former President Donald Trump from the FBI investigation into highly classified information stored in boxes as his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida — as new revelations continue to pour out of the investigation that makes Trump's actions appear less and less defensible."After having decried the FBI’s search of the ex-president’s home, many Trump defenders went silent upon the release on Friday of the probable-cause affidavit that revealed the extent of Trump’s efforts to hold onto the top-secret documents," reported Meridith McGraw, Andrew Desiderio, Nicholas Wu, and Kyle Cheney. "GOP worries about the developments of the case and Trump announcing a 2024 run before November are giving way to a subtle, broader warning about putting the former president too much on the ballot this fall."
MeidasTouchDonald Trump just posted a message on his failing social media company that the 2020 elections should be overturned and that he should be appointed President. This disturbing authoritarian declaration is being supported by the Republican Party.
By Caroline LintonA federal judge has unsealed a redacted version of the affidavit that was used to justify the search warrant executed earlier this month at former President Donald Trump's residence at Mar-a-Lago. The filings that have been made public so far show that the FBI's affidavit was 38 pages long, and at least 78 paragraphs long. It is heavily redacted — 11 pages are fully blacked out, and 24 are partially redacted.The affidavit says there was "probable cause" that evidence of obstruction would be found at the premises, Mar-a-Lago. It also states that "probable cause exists to believe that evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed in violation 18 U.S.C. §§ 793(e), 2071, or 1519 will be found at the PREMISES."The redacted affidavit also states that the FBI's investigation "established that documents bearing classification markings, which appear to contain National Defense Information (NDI), were among the materials contained in the FIFTEEN BOXES and were stored at the PREMISES in an undisclosed location."
Devan ColeTrump-era records were not returned to the government during the waning days of Donald Trump’s presidency despite a determination by one of his lawyers that they should be, an attorney at the National Archives said in an email reviewed by The Washington Post.“It is also our understanding that roughly two dozen boxes of original presidential records were kept in the Residence of the White House over the course of President Trump’s last year in office and have not been transferred to NARA, despite a determination by Pat Cipollone in the final days of the administration that they need to be,” Gary Stern, the National Archives and Records Administration’s chief counsel, wrote in an email to members of Trump’s legal team in May 2021, according to the Post.
By Bob Brigham | Raw StoryFormer President Donald Trump reportedly released a new document very late Monday night that legal experts believe is incredibly damning. Far-right writer John Solomon, who is one of Donald Trump's official representatives for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), released a May 10 letter on his JustTheNews.com website. Solomon released a letter from NARA to Trump's lawyers. "As you are no doubt aware, NARA had ongoing communications with the former President’s representatives throughout 2021 about what appeared to be missing Presidential records, which resulted in the transfer of 15 boxes of records to NARA in January 2022," the letter read. "In its initial review of materials within those boxes, NARA identified items marked as classified national security information, up to the level of Top Secret and including Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Program materials. NARA informed the Department of Justice about that discovery, which prompted the Department to ask the President to request that NARA provide the FBI with access to the boxes at issue so that the FBI and others in the Intelligence Community could examine them." Experts were stunned.
By Robert FarleyAfter the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago home and retrieved boxes of documents — some of them labeled “top secret” — former President Donald Trump released a statement claiming that as president, he had a “standing order … that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken to the residence were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them.”Numerous experts on national security and the law surrounding classified documents say that isn’t plausible. And in any case, whether some of the documents are classified — as many of them were marked — may be irrelevant to the criminal investigation, since none of the three criminal laws cited as the predicate for the search warrant require documents to be classified for a violation to occur.Nonetheless, the fact that Trump may have been holding classified documents has raised the stakes of the investigation. And it has also raised questions about the scope of Trump’s declassification powers. “I have been engaged in declassification issues since the 1970s, and I can attest that there is no precedent for such a standing order,” Richard Immerman, an assistant deputy director of national intelligence in the George W. Bush administration, told us via email. “Further, had he issued a standing order, it surely would have been ‘leaked’ by someone and then challenged.”
By Rebecca CohenHillary Clinton mocked former President Donald Trump for pleading the Fifth Amendment at his New York deposition, comparing it to her hours-long questioning over Benghazi in 2015. Clinton shared a tweet from Citizens for Ethics that read: "Hillary Clinton testified for 11 hours about Benghazi. Donald Trump pleaded the Fifth Amendment, over and over again, to avoid answering a question."
CBS NewsAllen Weisselberg, who spent decades in a top financial role in the Trump Organization, is expected to plead guilty to tax fraud charges in a New York courtroom on Thursday. CBS News investigative reporter Graham Kates has details on the case.
By Bob Brigham | Raw StoryDonald Trump's possession of documents marked with top secret classification at Mar-a-Lago was the focus of another bombshell report published online by The New York Times on Saturday evening."Last year, officials with the National Archives discovered that Mr. Trump had taken a slew of documents and other government material with him when he left the White House at the end of his tumultuous term in January 2021. That material was supposed to have been sent to the archives under the terms of the Presidential Records Act," Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush reported. "Mr. Trump returned 15 boxes of material in January of this year. When archivists examined the material, they found many pages of documents with classified markings and referred the matter to the Justice Department, which began an investigation and convened a grand jury."A subpoena was reportedly sent in the spring demanding the return of the classified public records. On June 3 to Mar-a-Lago by Jay I. Bratt, the top counterintelligence official in the DOJ’s national security division visited Mar-a-Lago and the newspaper reported "Bratt and his team left with additional material marked classified, and around that time also obtained the written declaration from a Trump lawyer attesting that all the material marked classified in the boxes had been turned over."
By Tom Boggioni | Raw StoryAccording to a report from the Washington Post, based on documents obtained by a watchdog group, a Donald Trump town hall event held in the chamber of the Lincoln Memorial cost taxpayers approximately $150k or more with critics also calling the use of the space "clearly illegal." At issue was a Trump interview with Fox news personalities Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum on May, 30, 2020 that was supposed to be held on the steps of the venerable memorial but was moved inside despite federal regulations banning such use.As the Post's Jonathan O'Connell, wrote, "In the spring of 2020, National Park Service personnel were preparing for an event President Donald Trump was holding with Fox News to address the nascent covid-19 pandemic from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, site of historic protests and inaugural concerts. But, first, they had to brief Trump on the plans." As the report notes, the former president's involvement led his handpicked interior secretary David Bernhardt to overrule federal regulations and approve moving the event.
By Betsy Woodruff Swan, Kyle Cheney and Nicholas WuAsearch warrant newly unsealed on Friday reveals that the FBI is investigating Donald Trump for a potential violation of the Espionage Act and removed classified documents from the former president’s Florida estate earlier this week. A receipt accompanying the search warrant, viewed by POLITICO in advance of its unsealing, shows that Trump possessed documents including a handwritten note; documents marked with “TS/SCI,” which indicates one of the highest levels of government classification; and another item labeled “Info re: President of France.”Also among the items taken from Mar-a-Lago this week: An item labeled “Executive grant of clemency re: Roger Jason Stone, Jr.,” a reference to one of Trump’s closest confidants who received a pardon in late 2020. The warrant shows federal law enforcement was investigating Trump for removal or destruction of records, obstruction of justice and violating the Espionage Act — which can encompass crimes beyond spying, such as the refusal to return national security documents upon request. Conviction under the statutes can result in imprisonment or fines. The documents, unsealed after the Justice Department sought their public disclosure amid relentless attacks by Trump and his GOP allies, underscore the extraordinary national security threat that federal investigators believed the missing documents presented. The concern grew so acute that Attorney General Merrick Garland approved the unprecedented search of Trump’s estate last week.
By Morgan Phillips, Politics Reporter and Keith Griffith For Dailymail.comThe FBI recovered 11 sets of classified documents from Mar-a-Lago during their raid on Monday, according to a report released Friday. Some of the documents were marked 'top secret' and are meant to be kept in specialized government facilities, the Wall Street Journal reported after seeing a copy of the search inventory. Agents recovered 20 boxes in total from the Florida estate, according to the report, with the rest including handwritten notes, photo binders, the grant of clemency of Roger Stone and a file with 'information on the President of France'. The warrant is believed to have given FBI agents permission to search in Trump's office and all storage areas on the premises, and states four sets of top secret documents, three sets of secret documents, and three sets of confidential documents were retrieved. Trump's attorneys now also claim former President Trump declassified the documents before he left office. A president has the power to declassify any document, but there is a strict federal procedure for doing so.In breaching the former president's residency Monday, the FBI was looking for Top Secret and 'compartmented' documents dealing with intelligence 'sources and methods,' government sources told Newsweek on Friday. 'Compartmented' documents would pertain to 'classified information concerning or derived from intelligence sources, methods, or analytical processes, which is required to be handled within formal access control systems established by the Director of National Intelligence.' Only a very small circle of people would be allowed to know what was on such documents, which could mean that a warrant or a receipt would not reveal much information about what was taken. Intelligence sources say that Trump would not have the capability to declassify such documents.
Igor DeryshFormer President Donald Trump and his lawyers have baselessly peddled a conspiracy theory that the FBI may have "planted" evidence during its raid on Mar-a-Lago because "nobody" was allowed to watch. But Trump's lawyer admitted on Thursday that Trump and his family watched the "whole thing" go down from New York through CCTV footage from the resort. Trump and his attorneys, Christina Bobb and Alina Habba, immediately claimed that the FBI may have "planted" damning evidence during the Mar-a-Lago raid on Monday without any proof, citing only the fact that Bobb was prevented from observing the search as is standard in such FBI operations. Trump, Bobb and Habba in numerous statements speculated about what the FBI may have done while "nobody" was watching."The FBI and others from the Federal Government would not let anyone, including my lawyers, be anywhere near the areas that were rummaged and otherwise looked at during the raid on Mar-a-Lago," Trump ranted on Truth Social on Tuesday. "Everyone was asked to leave the premises, they wanted to be left alone, without any witnesses to see what they were doing, taking or, hopefully not, 'planting.' Why did they STRONGLY insist on having nobody watching them, everybody out?" Bobb acknowledged on Thursday that while surveillance cameras at Mar-a-Lago were shut off for a "very short period of time" while FBI agents spoke to Trump's legal team, the former president and his family were able to view the entire raid through surveillance video."I think the folks in New York — President Trump and his family — they probably had a better view than I did. Because they had the CCTV, they were able to watch," Bobb told the right-wing outlet Real America's Voice. Bobb said that she was busy speaking with investigators during the search but the Trump family saw "the whole thing." "So they actually have a better idea of what took place inside," Bobb said.
By Graham KatesA New York State judge ruled Friday that a criminal fraud and tax evasion prosecution against the Trump Organization and its former CFO, Allen Weisselberg, can proceed. Weisselberg and the company asked a judge in February to dismiss all 15 counts charged against them. Judge Juan Merchan dismissed one of several tax fraud counts against the Trump Organization, but allowed all others to remain. Attorneys for Weisselberg and the company did not immediately comment on Friday's decisions.The Trump Organization and Weisselberg accused prosecutors of targeting them "based on political animus" toward former President Donald Trump. Weisselberg also argued he had received immunity against certain federal charges when he testified to a federal grand jury investigating former Trump attorney Michael Cohen. Jury selection will take place on Oct. 24.Prosecutors said in a May 23 filing that the Weisselberg investigation was spurred by a Nov. 2, 2020 Bloomberg article about perks Weisselberg allegedly received. "The article outlined many of the key facts relevant to the crimes charged," Manhattan prosecutor Solomon Shinerock wrote in May. The Trump Organization was accused in July 2021 of providing executives with lavish untaxed perks, which prosecutors called "indirect employee compensation." Weisselberg, a 74-year-old who had been at Trump's side at the company for decades, was accused of receiving $1.7 million in perks — including an apartment and car. Weisselberg and the company have entered not guilty pleas.
Tommy ChristopherInfluential news aggregator Matt Drudge, founder and editor of the Drudge Report, tied former President Donald Trump to the FBI shooting by slapping a devastating nickname on the attacker. Following the attack on an FBI office in Cincinnati, Ohio, speculation immediately began that the shooting might have had something to do with anger over the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago — anger that Trump fueled with a public campaign to baselessly smear the FBI over the search by claiming they “planted” evidence.Since then, we’ve learned that the attack was apparently carried out by a supporter of Trump — 42-year-old Ricky Shiffer — who was angry about the raid on Mar-a-Lago. Shiffer was shot by police following a standoff, news that Drudge announced at the top of his site with a bit of deadly (for Trump) branding: “MAGA MANIAC SHOT DEAD IN OH…” Drudge wrote, and linked to an Axios article entitled “What we know about the FBI Ohio office attack suspect.” The article notes Shiffer’s Trump-related social media activity:
By Bob Brigham | Raw StoryWhile the world was shocked after The Washington Post dropped the bombshell report that the FBI was searching Mar-a-Lago for nuclear weapons documents, some national security experts were also shocked that "signals intelligence" was recovered from Donald Trump's Florida home."Former senior intelligence officials said in interviews that during the Trump administration, highly classified intelligence about sensitive topics, including about intelligence-gathering on Iran, was routinely mishandled," the newspaper reported. "One former official said the most highly classified information often ended up in the hands of personnel who didn’t appear to have a need to possess it or weren’t authorized to read it. That former official also said signals intelligence — intercepted electronic communications like emails and phone calls of foreign leaders — was among the type of information that often ended up with unauthorized personnel. Such intercepts are among the most closely guarded secrets because of what they can reveal about how the United States has penetrated foreign governments."That pattern may not have ended when Trump left the White House after losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden. "A person familiar with the inventory of 15 boxes taken from Mar-a-Lago in January indicated that signals intelligence material was included in them," the newspaper reported. "The precise nature of the information was unclear."
By Amy ShermanFormer President Donald Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment during questioning by the New York attorney general’s office as part of a civil investigation into his business practices. The amendment protects against self-incrimination. His decision to not answer questions stood in contrast to statements he made in the past about people who took the Fifth; he once said the option was for people who were in the mob.Time for a look at Trump’s statements about the Fifth Amendment on our Flip-O-Meter. The rating is not making a value judgment about a politician who changes positions on an issue — our purpose on the Flip-O-Meter is to document if the person’s position has changed. Trump has expressed a mixture of opinions about the Fifth Amendment depending upon his position about the person at the center of the relevant legal case. In 2016, he repeatedly criticized Hillary Clinton’s aides for taking the Fifth Amendment over questions about her emails. But in August, as Trump found himself at the center of multiple investigations, he was in favor of taking the Fifth. New York Attorney General Letitia James opened an investigation to explore whether "Trump’s annual financial statements inflated the values of Trump’s assets to obtain favorable terms for loans and insurance coverage, while also deflating the value of other assets to reduce real estate taxes."Trump spoke in favor of the Fifth Amendment before 2016In his 1990 divorce from Ivana, Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment, wrote Wayne Barrett in his 1992 book, "Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth." "Donald preaches in every speech, including the one announcing his presidential bid, about his devotion to the Second Amendment. But it was the Fifth Amendment that was his favorite when he was deposed in the divorce with Ivana, invoked 97 times to be exact, mostly in response to questions about ‘other women,’" Barrett wrote.
Philip BumpThere are not many people who know exactly why FBI agents searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on Monday. The FBI knows, certainly, and the former president and his attorneys probably have a good sense as well, given that they saw the search warrant. Everyone else is operating on what’s been revealed by Trump’s team and public reporting: The FBI search was largely or entirely a function of the investigation into Trump’s retention of documents after leaving the White House.We know that he did, by his own admission. This year, a number of boxes of material were turned over to the National Archives. Included in that material were some that were classified. On Monday, the FBI removed another dozen boxes, with speculation rampant that more of that material was similarly restricted. If Trump is found to have violated federal law in removing and retaining classified documents without authorization, he could be convicted of a felony punishable by five years in prison. And that conviction would be a felony carrying that punishment because of a law signed by President Donald Trump.
Sources say justice department officials worried records were being held unlawfully at the former president’s Florida estateVictoria BekiempisFederal investigators searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach after an informant told them he might be storing classified records at his private club, the Wall Street Journal has reported. The search on Monday reportedly came two months after federal law enforcement officials came to Mar-a-Lago to talk about boxes of government documents that were being stored there. Federal authorities searched Trump’s sprawling south Florida residence having obtained a warrant to seek classified and White House records that the US justice department thought Trump had kept unlawfully, two sources previously told the Guardian.
By Bob Brigham | Raw StoryFormer President Donald Trump may lose the "crown jewels" of the heir's corporate empire if New York Attorney General Letitia James moves to invoke New York's "corporate death penalty" against the Trump Organization, according to a new report. On Wednesday, Trump announced he would refuse to answer questions in James' civil investigation into the company during a deposition that lasted more than five hours. The investigation focuses on whether the Trump Organization essentially kept two sets of books. He allegedly would low-ball values to avoid taxes, while high-balling values to secure loans."In the coming weeks or even days, the AG is expected to file a massive, long-threatened 'enforcement action' — essentially a multi-hundred-page lawsuit against the Trumps and his Manhattan-based business," Business Insider reported Wednesday. "Fines and back taxes, however, may be the least of what Trump's facing. James has signaled she will also seek the dissolution of the business itself under New York's so-called corporate death penalty -- a law that allows the AG to seek to dissolve businesses that operate 'in a persistently fraudulent or illegal manner.'"
CNNCNN’s John King and legal analyst Elie Honig discuss former President Donald Trump’s past statements on the Fifth Amendment after news broke that he declined to answer questions in a scheduled deposition with New York Attorney General Letitia James.
David JacksonWASHINGTON – There's never been a set of presidential scandals like this one. Of course, there's never been a president like Donald Trump. While predecessors like Richard Nixon, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Warren Harding, and Bill Clinton faced a large share of allegations, no president has been the subject of such an array of inquiries as Trump, ranging from the handling of classified material to alleged incitement of an insurrection. Just this week, Trump became the first former president to have his home searched. Two days later, he became the first to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during a New York state probe into past business practices. "There's never been anything like this," said Julia Azari, a political science professor at Marquette University who specializes in presidential politics. "The whole Trump phenomenon is unique when it comes to pushing back on institutions and norms," as well as "the extent of the post-presidency legal issues."'Pretty unprecedented'Johnson and Clinton were impeached, and Nixon was on his way to impeachment when he resigned in 1974. Until Trump, however, no president had been impeached twice – first over pressuring Ukraine to investigate then-candidate Joe Biden, then for alleged incitement of the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. "Allegations against presidents go way back," said Thomas Alan Schwartz, professor of history and political science at Vanderbilt University. "The idea of an actual criminal probe of a former president? That's actually new ... It's really pretty unprecedented."
An attorney for Trump said the former president answered only one question, about his name, during the four-hour deposition.By Adam Reiss, Chantal Da Silva and Rebecca ShabadFormer President Donald Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination Wednesday during a deposition before lawyers from New York Attorney General Letitia James' office in its probe into the Trump Organization's business practices. The deposition lasted four hours, and the only question the former president answered was about his name, Trump attorney Ron Fischetti told NBC News. A source with knowledge of the deposition said Trump took the fifth more than 440 times."I once asked, 'If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?'" Trump said in a statement. "Now I know the answer to that question. When your family, your company, and all the people in your orbit have become the targets of an unfounded, politically motivated Witch Hunt supported by lawyers, prosecutors, and the Fake News Media, you have no choice. Accordingly, under the advice of my counsel and for all of the above reasons, I declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States Constitution."
Deepa ShivaramAgents from the FBI searched former President Donald Trump's Florida home Monday in what appears to be part of an investigation looking into White House records from the White House that Trump took with him. The records were supposed to be turned into the National Archives when he left office. The FBI is not commenting on the details of the investigation or the search, and Trump was quick to say he had been previously cooperating with authorities investigating the records, though he did not add any specifics.This isn't the only investigation Trump is a subject of at the moment. Authorities have several open on the former president, including investigations into his businesses, his tax returns and his actions leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. These investigations brew as Trump weighs another presidential run. The political consequences of the probes are unclear, as are how, or whether, they would impact his decision. Here are is a recap of some of the investigations involving Trump.
Donald Trump invoked the 5th Amendment and declined to answer questions from the New York attorney general during deposition Wednesday. Trump has been the subject of a three-year New York investigation involving potentially misleading financial statements. Following Wednesday's deposition, a 2016 clip of the former president resurfaced with Trump asking, "If you're innocent, why're you taking the 5th Amendment?
Trump took the Fifth 440+ times his son took the Fifth 500 hundred times. What are Trump and his son Guilty of?By Katherine FungFormer President Donald Trump announced that he would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights during his Wednesday deposition with New York Attorney General Letitia James' office in a reversal from the stance he took nearly six years ago when he was running for the presidency. In a statement made Wednesday, just an hour after Trump arrived at James' headquarters in New York City, the former president said, "I once asked, 'If you're innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?' Now I know the answer to that question.""When your family, your company and all the people in your orbit have become the targets of an unfounded, politically motivated Witch Hunt supported by lawyers, prosecutors and the Fake News Media, you have no choice," Trump said. "Accordingly, under the advice of my counsel and for all of the above reasons, I declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States Constitution," he added.During the 2016 campaign, Trump had blasted aides of his former opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, for pleading the Fifth in the probe of her use of a private email server. "So there are five people taking the Fifth Amendment, like you see on the mob, right? You see the mob takes the Fifth. If you're innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?" Trump told the crowd at an Iowa rally in September 2016.
David Knowles·Senior Editor | Yahoo!NewsNew York Times reporter Maggie Haberman released photos on Monday that appear to show that former President Donald Trump tried to dispose of documents by ripping them up and placing them in toilets. The pictures, which appear to back up Haberman's reporting in her forthcoming book, "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America," support reporting from multiple news outlets that Trump routinely ripped up documents in violation of the Presidential Records Act. Haberman obtained the photos, which were first published by Axios and which she also shared with Yahoo News, from sources inside the former administration. "On the left is a White House toilet, the word 'qualified' and a capital I visible," Haberman wrote in a tweet on Monday. "On the left, a toilet from a Trump trip overseas."
By Kaitlan Collins, CNNCNN — The FBI executed a search warrant on Monday at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, the former President confirmed to CNN. Trump declined to say why the FBI agents were at Mar-a-Lago, but the former President said the raid was unannounced and “they even broke into my safe.” “My beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” he said in a statement. Trump was not in Florida at the time of the raid.
David SmithThere have now been nine televised hearings of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. The main purpose of these hearings has been to publicly present evidence of former President Donald Trump’s culpability for the January 6 riot. The mostly Democratic congressional committee, assisted by two of Trump’s fiercest Republican opponents, has made the hearings into a compellingly produced TV spectacle. The hearings drew an average of 13.1 million viewers across multiple networks, which is slightly more than the average viewership of the 2021 Major League Baseball World Series.Surveys suggest this audience, like the committee itself, is overwhelmingly Democratic. They may have already been convinced of Trump’s responsibility for the January 6 riot, but 64% of Democrats say they have learned new information about the attacks from the hearings. Some of the evidence presented in the hearings has been spectacular. Multiple video depositions from Trump allies and even family members showed how they tried to convince him the election was lost. This did not stop him from pressuring officials to overturn election results and trying to enact a bizarre and illegal plan to stall the vote count.
By Eric Bradner, CNN Photographs by Rachel Woolf for CNNCNN — Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney said if the Justice Department does not prosecute former President Donald Trump for his role in the insurrection at the US Capitol and “the facts and the evidence are there,” the decision could call into question whether the United States can “call ourselves a nation of laws.” In an interview with CNN’s Kasie Hunt, Cheney – the GOP vice chair of the House select committee investigating the events surrounding the January 6, 2021, insurrection – said Trump is “guilty of the most serious dereliction of duty of any president in our nation’s history” and pointed to a judge who’s said he likely committed crimes. She said the House committee is “going to continue to follow the facts. I think Department of Justice will do that. But they have to make decisions about prosecution.”
Chauncey Devega, SalonTo this point, the House Jan. 6 committee hearings and related investigations have decisively established that Donald Trump and his confederates, including some Republican members of Congress, were involved in a serious, nationwide conspiracy spanning from the local to the federal level aimed at nullifying the results of the 2020 presidential election and installing Trump as an autocratic ruler. Several apparent crimes were committed as part of this coup plot, likely including seditious conspiracy, voter fraud, financial fraud, witness tampering, obstruction of Congress and perhaps even acts of terrorism.The assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by thousands of Trump's armed followers, including right-wing paramilitaries, was a key part of the coup plot. Trump's mob was not "random" or "hapless" or "unarmed" or "uncoordinated" as too many observers in the mainstream news media and elsewhere have long insisted. Some were armed with lethal weapons including pistols and assault rifles. Their goals were clear: Keep Donald Trump in power at any cost, in defiance of the will of the American people. Their methods were obvious: Use any means necessary, up to and including lethal violence, to stop the certification of the 2020 election.
By Andres Triay, Robert CostaThe Justice Department's criminal investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, rioting at the U.S. Capitol, now includes questions for witnesses about the communications of people close to then-President Donald Trump and his reelection campaign, CBS News has confirmed. That news, first reported by The Washington Post, was confirmed to CBS News by a U.S. government official familiar with the investigation and a source with knowledge of what's been presented by the Justice Department to a grand jury. It is not evident that Trump himself is a target of the investigation, only that that prosecutors are asking questions related to him and his aides.
Trump fires off barrage of furious messages after Jan 6 hearing reveals damning evidence of his inaction
Maroosha Muzaffar
Donald Trump used his Truth Social app to let out his anger after the Jan 6 committee’s latest public hearing on Thursday revealed further damning evidence of the former president’s inaction during the Capitol riot. An angry barrage of posts from his Truth Social account attacked the usual suspects who have questioned him or are opposed to his politics.Nancy Pelosi, Jake Tapper, Liz Cheney and Hillary Clinton were not spared by Mr Trump’s social media spree. Attacking CNN’s Tapper, he wrote: “Fake [sic] Tapper is so biased and pathetic. No wonder CNN’s ratings are at an all-time low. P.S. Almost all Trump Endorsed candidates have won, or are winning.” Pivoting to Ms Cheney, the former president blasted her as “a sanctimonious loser”. “The Great State of Wyoming is wise to her. Why not show the tapes, or interview, those that, with evidence, challenge the election?”
Hansi Lo WangFormer President Donald Trump's administration spent years trying to add a census citizenship question as part of a secret strategy for altering the population numbers used to divide up seats in Congress and the Electoral College, internal documents released Wednesday by the House Oversight and Reform Committee confirm.Long kept from the public, the Trump administration memos and emails were disclosed by lawmakers following a more than two-year legal fight that began after Trump officials refused to turn them over for a congressional investigation. Citing the "exceptional circumstances" of the case, the Biden administration, which inherited the lawsuit last year, agreed to allow House oversight committee members and their staff to review the documents.The hotly contested question — "Is this a person a citizen of the United States?" — ultimately did not end up on the 2020 census forms. In 2019, the Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration's unprecedented efforts after finding its use of the Voting Rights Act as the stated reasoning for the question "seems to have been contrived," as Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.
By Bob Brigham | Raw StoryOne of America's top counterintelligence experts revealed his thoughts on Saturday on the three men linked to sanctioned Russian spies who were present for a key White House meeting plotting Donald Trump's coup attempt. "Four days after the electors met across the country and made Joe Biden the president elect, Donald Trump was still trying to find a way to hang on to the presidency," Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said in Tuesday's public hearing of the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol."On Friday, December 18th, his team of outside advisers paid him a surprise visit in the White House that would quickly become the stuff of legend," Raskin explained. "The meeting has been called unhinged, not normal and the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency. The outside lawyers who'd been involved in dozens of failed lawsuits had lots of theories supporting the big lie, but no evidence to support it." At the meeting, the idea of using the U.S. military to seize voting machines."In the wee hours of December 19th, dissatisfied with his options, Donald Trump decided to call for a large and wild crowd on Wednesday, January 6th, the day when Congress would meet to certify the electoral votes," Raskin explained. "Never before in American history had a president called for a crowd to come contest the counting of electoral votes by Congress or engaged in any effort designed to influence, delay, or obstruct the joint session of Congress in doing its work required by our Constitution and the Electoral Count Act. As we'll see, Donald Trump's 1:42 AM tweet electrified and galvanized his supporters, especially the dangerous extremists in the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and other racist and white nationalist groups spoiling for a fight against the government."
Chris McGrealThe New York attorney general’s office is expected to begin questioning Donald Trump and two of his children over allegations of financial fraud today after the former president failed in his legal bid to block what he has called a politically motivated “witch hunt”. Trump and his two eldest children, Ivanka and Donald Jr, were summoned to give sworn depositions after state attorney general, Letitia James, said a three-year civil investigation uncovered evidence that the Trump Organization routinely inflated the value of properties, including office blocks, apartment buildings and golf courses, in order to obtain loans at favorable rates and to claim tax breaks.The AG’s office alleges that the former president’s Trump Tower apartment block was recorded as being three times as large as it really was as part of the fraud. The process of taking depositions at the state supreme court in Manhattan is expected to continue into next week. It is not immediately clear on which day the former president will be questioned but Trump’s lawyer has indicated that he will invoke his constitutional right against self-incrimination and refuse to answer questions. The case adds to a string of legal troubles for Trump, including the possibility of criminal charges for tax evasion. The Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, are expected to go on trial later this year on charges of tax fraud following a parallel investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
Donald J. Trump News 
Looking for more information on Donald J. Trump (aka Don the Con, aka Don the Snake, aka Two face Donnie, aka The Don, aka Criminal Don). Here you can find information on lawsuits against Trump, Trump’s time is the white house, Trump Administration scandals and corruption, Trump before the white house, Trump’s Enablers, Flunkies, Minions and Sycophants, Trump Impeachments, Trump Insurrection, Trump Insurrection Videos, Trump Is a Crook, Trump Is Threat To National Security, Trump Russia Affair, Trump-Ukraine Affair, Trump vs. Trump, how Trump runs his properties and more. Find out if Trump is filling his pockets with foreign money and your tax dollars. Find out if Trump is a good a businessman or a bad businessman and how viral, nasty and disgusting Trump properties are. Find out if Trump is a crook and/or a conman. Find out if Trump lies about his lies and more.The more you know the better informed you will be to make your own determination on the real Donald J. Trump (aka Don the Con, aka Don the Snake, aka Two face Donnie, aka The Don, aka Criminal Don). Find out all you can about Donald J. Trump, for some you may find he is not the man you thought he was, for others you may be proven right, for others you may find he is far worse than you thought he was.
Polls: 
Your opinion matters take one of our free online polls:
Some of Donald J. Trump's Twitter Hashtags: 
See what people really think about Donald J. Trump.
News Menu: 
All News Blog Business and Financial News Commentary and Opinions Coronavirus (Covid-19) Corruption News Crime News DEM Watch Election Fraud Election Interference Entertainment News Environment News FBI News Fox News GOP Watch Headline News Health News January 6 Commission Mob News News Links Odd News Past Headline News Political News Politics Republicans vs Republicans Sports News Technology News Terrorism News The Mueller Investigation Top Stories Trump U.S. Headline News U.S. Monthly News White House World Headline News World Monthly News
Read it the then discuss it in the Forums.
News got you down then check out: 