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The latest: Trump lawyers take no formal stance on releasing affidavit

cigaretteman

HR King
May 29, 2001
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Former president Donald Trump has said in a social media post that he believes the affidavit providing justification for last week’s search of his Florida residence should be released publicly “in the interest of TRANSPARENCY.”
Trump’s lawyers, however, have not submitted any formal motion declaring such a stance to the courts.
A federal judge in West Palm Beach, Fla., had set a 9 a.m. Eastern time deadline for parties wishing to enter their position into the official record. A hearing is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. on whether to unseal the affidavit.
News organizations are seeking to make it public while the Justice Department opposes its release.
Ahead of the hearing, The Post’s Josh Dawsey and Perry Stein write that former Justice Department officials who have closely followed the case have said the affidavit is unlikely to contain any “good” information for the former president and, as The Post reported earlier this week, Trump’s advisers had not reached a consensus on whether its disclosure would be in his best interest. Per our colleagues:
Law enforcement officials submit such documents to a judge as part of their application for a search warrant. Affidavits typically contain information addressing why authorities think there is evidence at a certain property and other details about their investigation.
It has become the latest flash point in federal authorities’ ongoing criminal probe stemming from Trump’s dispute with the National Archives over materials taken from the White House when his term ended last year.
You can read the full story here.
 
They could release a lot of things publicity. Security Camera footage. Of search and footage leading up to the initial meetings from National Archives. The orders that lead to the information being declassified, etc Me thinks they won't do that.
 
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They could release a lot of things publicity. Security Camera footage. Of search and footage leading up to the initial meetings from National Archives. The orders that lead to the information being declassified, etc Me thinks they won't do that.
Donald Trump and his allies are reportedly talking about releasing Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage showing FBI agents searching the Florida resort. This will supposedly show jackbooted FBI thugs swarming over the former president’s home, graphically illustrating his long-running complaint of political persecution.
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Trump absolutely should release that footage.
It would totally Own the Libs.

CNN reports that the debate over the footage is intensifying among Trump and assorted insiders. One former legal adviser tells CNN that Trump will likely release it if he is persuaded it’s “bad for his enemies.”
Trump himself appears to be on the verge of agreeing. His son Eric Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity this week that the footage will “absolutely” be released “at the right time.”

President Trump, please proceed.


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Key to his mystique among his supporters has long been the idea that he always has another trump card up his sleeve. No matter how grim the outlook for Trump painted in the Fake News, he’s actually wielding absolute mastery over events. He has his enemies exactly where he wants ’em.


But this episode provides a glimpse into the absurdity and ultimate hollowness of this sort of politics-by-megalomaniacal-illusion. Trump and his allies appear so certain the public is being seduced by his tale of persecution — so certain that release of the footage can only help him — that only a few scattered allies are seriously entertaining how this stunt might backfire.

All this will escalate Thursday, when a court hears arguments over the Justice Department’s affidavit for the Mar-a-Lago search warrant. The department opposes release of the affidavit — which details the rationale that persuaded a judge to allow the search — on grounds that it could jeopardize the investigation and the cooperation of witnesses.


But The Post and other news organizations are pursuing its release, given the search’s “historic importance.” And yes: Release of a redacted version could even shed a lot of light for the public on the reasons for the search.
Trump himself is also pushing for the affidavit’s release. Here again, he appears persuaded that he can use this to attack the FBI and cast himself as a persecuted martyr.

What’s unclear is why Trump thinks this. The inventory for the search has already confirmed it turned up highly classified documents in Trump’s possession, bolstering the idea that it was well grounded.
The affidavit might confirm that and more. Indeed, some Trump advisers worry about exactly this. Yet Trump apparently believes he can spin its release to his advantage no matter what’s in it, so formidable are his magical reality-bending powers.






This boundless confidence in the powers of Trumpian spin are also visible in deliberations over the Mar-a-Lago footage. One ally says it will “drive the base f---ing bananas” to see scenes of agents defiling Trump’s hallowed grounds. Former adviser Stephen K. Bannon claims the footage will “Red-Pill the nation,” jolting the whole country into a frenzy of outrage over Trump’s martyrdom.

Only a few lonely voices are urging caution. As CNN reports:
Others in Trump’s orbit have warned of the potential risks to the former President if he does release the tapes. A second person close to Trump cautioned that releasing the footage could backfire by providing people with a visual understanding of the sheer volume of materials that federal agents seized from his oceanfront residence, including classified materials.
Let’s ponder the absurdity Trumpworld’s calculations: We should release this footage to spin Trump as a victim of persecution! But wait, won’t that footage show that he is hoarding lots of documents — including highly classified national security secrets — at his resort for suspiciously unknown reasons? Wouldn’t that show the search was reasonable, and that Trump just might have done something wrong, after all?


Why, yes, it just might. But what’s notable is the bottomless certainty that anything can be spun to Trump’s advantage, even if it obviously might further incriminate him.
There’s a deeper absurdity here, which is that Trump’s cries of persecution look even more absurd in light of FBI history.

There is a legacy of political witch hunts at the FBI, and for this reason, we should take seriously the need for congressional oversight of the Mar-a-Lago search. We should approach its rationale with a trust-but-verify skepticism until we know more.
But Trump and his allies aren’t arguing for reasoned good-faith skepticism. They insist it has already been established that the search is wholly corrupt and illegitimate to its core, that it’s one of the most flagrant abuses by law enforcement in all of U.S. history.


So I checked in with Tim Weiner, the author of a history of the FBI. Weiner points to the absurdity of comparing the Mar-a-Lago search with the bureau’s darkest moments.

“The FBI relentlessly wiretapped Martin Luther King,” Weiner told me. “It tried to destroy the antiwar and civil rights movements in the ’60s and early ’70s.”
“And from his first days as FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover sought to infiltrate and subvert the American Civil Liberties Union,” Weiner continued. “Those were witch hunts. This is an espionage investigation.”
Journalist Garrett Graff points to another historical irony: For all of Trumpworld’s efforts to cast the FBI as a bastion of deep-state operatives working for the Democratic Party, the agency has historically been “the most culturally conservative and traditionally White Christian institution in the entire U.S. government.”
But by all means, President Trump, release the footage. The more transparency the better. You always have a secret weapon at hand to catch your enemies totally unaware, right? Go ahead and Own the Libs! What are you waiting for?

 
So Trump is going to release the video of the raid for the cameras he claimes he was told to turn off? Sad thing is MAGAts won't question that at all.
 
Remember the election official who supposedly handed a flash drive to another official. Which turned out to be a piece of gum. Probably get 500 of those conspiracies going from the footage that he'd chose to release.
 
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This won't go well for Trump either way.

If MAGAts have video of recognizable FBI agents and an agent is attacked or killed...shit would fly.

This is just more bluster from Turd and his incompetent attorneys.
 
This won't go well for Trump either way.

If MAGAts have video of recognizable FBI agents and an agent is attacked or killed...shit would fly.

This is just more bluster from Turd and his incompetent attorneys.
Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity. They may think the same tactics they used on the election conspiracies and Capitol Seige are fair game.
 
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