August 16, 2022 at 07:22AM Trump warns ‘terrible things are going to happen’ in US after ‘sneak attack’ FBI raid
Former President Donald Trump warned Monday that “the temperature has to be brought down in the country” or “terrible things are going to happen” before accusing the FBI of a “sneak attack” raid on his Florida estate last week.
“The country is in a very dangerous position,” Trump told Fox News Digital in his first interview since the Aug. 8 search. “There is tremendous anger, like I’ve never seen before, over all of the scams, and this new one — years of scams and witch hunts, and now this.”
“If there is anything we can do to help, I, and my people, would certainly be willing to do that,” the 45th president continued.
More than two dozen boxes of items, including 11 sets of classified documents, were seized from Mar-a-Lago.Marco Bello/REUTERS
According to an inventory that was unsealed by a federal judge Friday, four sets of documents were marked “Top Secret,” the highest level of classification the government can give information; three were marked “Secret,” the second-highest level, while the remaining three were marked “Confidential,” the lowest classification level.
Another set was marked “Various classified/TS/SCI documents,” which is the abbreviation for “top secret/sensitive compartmented information,” a special category meant to protect the nation’s most important secrets.
Four sets of seized documents were marked “Top Secret,” three were marked “Secret,” and the remaining three were marked “Confidential.”Jon Elswick/APA member of former President Donald Trump’s legal team signed a written statement contending that all classified material once held at Mar-a-Lago had been returned to the government.Jon Elswick/AP
News of the raid caused outrage among the former president’s supporters, with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warning this weekend of a spike in threats to law enforcement.
“The people of this country are not going to stand for another scam,” said Trump, who claimed that he and his legal team had contacted the Justice Department and offered to assist in their investigation into whether the former president violated three federal laws dealing with government information.
The former President told Fox News Digital that his team “has not heard yet” from the DOJ.
“I think they would want the same thing—I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “It is a very dangerous time for our country.”
Elsewhere in the interview, the former president contended: “There has never been a time like this where law enforcement has been used to break into the house of a former president of the United States, and there is tremendous anger in the country—at a level that has never been seen before, other than during very perilous times.”
Trump then lamented “years of fake witch hunts and phony Russia, Russia, Russia schemes and scams.”
“And then they break into a president’s house— a sneak attack where it was totally—no one ever thought a thing like this would happen,” he added.
The FBI operation occurred as Trump is publicly mulling a third consecutive run for the White House in 2024.
The 45th president reacted angrily to the raid, even suggesting that agents may have planted evidence during their search. On Monday, he claimed that the searchers told his team to turn off security cameras and remain outdoors while the raid took place.
“They could take anything they want, and put anything they want in,” Trump told Fox News Digital Monday. “My people were asked to stand outside.”
On Sunday, the former president called on the Department of Justice to return the seized documents, citing a Fox News report that at least five of the 27 boxes removed from Mar-a-Lago contained information covered by attorney-client or executive privilege.
“Oh great! It has just been learned that the FBI, in its now famous raid of Mar-a-Lago, took boxes of privileged ‘attorney-client’ material, and also ‘executive’ privileged material, which they knowingly should not have taken,” Trump said on his Truth Social site.
“By copy of this TRUTH, I respectfully request that these documents be immediately returned to the location from which they were taken. Thank you!,” he wrote.
The three statutes at issue ban the gathering, transmission or loss of defense information (a law commonly known as the Espionage Act); the concealment, removal or mutilation of documents; or the destruction, alteration or falsification of records in federal probes.
Trump’s team is arguing that the documents were in fact declassified, citing a “standing order” the former president had while in office that deemed sensitive documents “declassified the moment he removed them” from the White House.
Despite the claim, the New York Times reported this weekend that a member of Trump’s legal team signed a written statement during a visit by Justice Department officials in early June — two months before the raid — contending that all classified material once held at Mar-a-Lago had been returned to the government.
August 15, 2022 at 06:42AM Feds see American anger over Trump raid, insecure border as posing increased terror threat
Americans angry about the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Florida estate and insecurity at the southern border pose an increased risk of domestic terrorism, the Biden administration warned in a series of bulletins sent to federal and local law enforcement over the weekend.
The warnings from the Justice Department, the Homeland Security Department, the FBI and Customs and Border Protection used nearly identical language and were issued after one man tried to attack an FBI office in Cincinnati and a driver crashed into a barrier with his car on fire at the U.S. Capitol before committing suicide.
“Last night, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice issued a Joint Intelligence Bulletin, accessible via the Homeland Security Information Network, providing information on the potential for domestic violent extremists to carry out attacks on federal, state, and local law enforcement and government personnel or facilities,” CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus wrote in a memo to 60,000 employees.
The warnings were being “shared in light of an increase in threats and acts of violence, including armed encounters, against law enforcement, judiciary, and government personnel, in reaction to the FBI’s recent execution of a court authorized search warrant in Palm Beach, Florida,” Magnus wrote. “Since the search, the FBI and DHS have observed an increase in violent threats posted on social media against federal officials and facilities.”
A senior law enforcement official told Just the News that some federal police agencies were asked last week to monitor social media accounts of known political influencers for signs of agitation and FBI officials reached out to some social media platforms frequented by conservatives in the aftermath of Cincinnati attack, in which the perpetrator was killed.
Most of the warnings cited the Aug. 8 FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound as a possible motivation for violence. Some, like Magnus’ memo, also mentioned concerns about illegal immigration, suggesting such concerns weren’t warranted even though scores of members of Congress have expressed concern about border security under President Biden, officials said.
“As described in the June 7 National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin, some domestic violent extremists have expressed grievances related to the false perception that the U.S. government is not working to maintain security along the U.S.-Mexico border,” Magnus wrote. “And there remains increased risk of domestic violent extremists relying on these grievances to justify violence against law enforcement officials involved in the enforcement of border security.”
The memos said they had no specific or credible threats but urged federal and local law enforcement to use heightened awareness.
“Out of an abundance of caution and to ensure the safety of our workforce and the security of federal facilities, we are encouraging you to remain vigilant and aware of your surroundings and to exercise caution as you go about your daily routine,” one memo said.
BREAKING: Garland Speaks LIVE for First Time Since FBI Raid on Mar-a-Lago
https://ift.tt/agWBiE6
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland is scheduled to speak to the media LIVE for the first time since the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago:
Below is a transcript of Garland’s speech:
Since I became Attorney General I have made clear that the Justice Department will speak through its court filings and its work. Just now the Justice Department has filed a motion in the Southern District of Florida to unseal a search warrant and property receipt relating to a court-approved search that the FBI conducted earlier this week.
That search was a premises located in Florida belonging to the former President. The department did not make any public statements on the day of the search.
The former president publicly confirmed the search that evening as is his right. Copies of both the warrant and the FBI property receipt were provided on the day of the search to the president’s counsel who was on-site during the search.
The search warrant was authorized by a federal court upon the required finding of probable cause.
The property receipt is a document that federal law requires law enforcement agents to leave with the property owner.
The department filed the motion to make public the warrant and receipt in light of the former president’s public confirmation of the search, the surrounding circumstances and the substantial public interest in this matter.
Faithful adherence to the rule of law is the bedrock principle of the Justice Dept. and of our democracy. Upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly without fear or favor. Under my watch that is precisely what the Justice Dept. is doing.
All Americans are entitled to even-handed application of the law, the due process of the law and the presumption of innocence. Much of our work is by necessity conducted out of the public eye. We do that to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans and to protect the integrity of our investigations. Federal law, long-standing department rules and our ethical obligations prevent me from providing further details as to the basis of the search at this time.
There are, however, certain points I want you to know.
First, I personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant in this matter.
Second, the department does not take such a decision lightly. Where possible it is standard practice to seek less-intrusive means as an alternative to a search and to narrowly-scope any search that is undertaken.
Third, let me address recent unfounded attacks on the professionalism of the FBI and Justice Dept. agents and prosecutors. I will not stand by silently when their integrity is unfairly attacked. The men and women of the FBI and Justice Dept. are dedicated patriotic public servants. Every day they protect the American people from violent crime, terrorism and other threats to their safety, while safeguarding our civil rights. They do so at great personal sacrifice and risk to themselves. I am honored to work alongside them.
This is all I can say right now more information will be made available in the appropriate way and at the appropriate time.
Notably, Garland never mentioned former president Trump by name and only referred to the raid as a “search.”
35 min wait for:
1. doj will unseal the warrant and property receipt barring an objection from trump
August 10, 2022 at 05:15PM Exclusive: An informer told the FBI what documents Trump was hiding, and where
The raid on Mar-a-Lago was based largely on information from an FBI confidential human source, one who was able to identify what classified documents former President Trump was still hiding and even the location of those documents, two senior government officials told Newsweek.
The officials, who have direct knowledge of the FBI’s deliberations and were granted anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters, said the raid of Donald Trump‘s Florida residence was deliberately timed to occur when the former president was away.
A confidential informer told the FBI what documents Donald Trump was hiding at Mar-a-Lago, and where. The former president at a rally on August 05, 2022 in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
FBI decision-makers in Washington and Miami thought that denying the former president a photo opportunity or a platform from which to grandstand (or to attempt to thwart the raid) would lower the profile of the event, says one of the sources, a senior Justice Department official who is a 30-year veteran of the FBI.
The effort to keep the raid low-key failed: instead, it prompted a furious response from GOP leaders and Trump supporters. “What a spectacular backfire,” says the Justice official.
“I know that there is much speculation out there that this is political persecution, but it is really the best and the worst of the bureaucracy in action,” the official says. “They wanted to punctuate the fact that this was a routine law enforcement action, stripped of any political overtones, and yet [they] got exactly the opposite.”
Both senior government officials say the raid was scheduled with no political motive, the FBI solely intent on recovering highly classified documents that were illegally removed from the White House. Preparations to conduct such an operation began weeks ago, but in planning the date and time, the FBI Miami Field Office and Washington headquarters were focused on the former president’s scheduled return to Florida from his residences in New York and New Jersey.
“They were seeking to avoid any media circus,” says the second source, a senior intelligence official who was briefed on the investigation and the operation. “So even though everything made sense bureaucratically and the FBI feared that the documents might be destroyed, they also created the very firestorm they sought to avoid, in ignoring the fallout.”
A “Florida For Trump” flag being displayed outside Mar-a-Lago following the FBI search.
Eva Marie Uzcategui/GETTY
On Monday at about 10 a.m. EST, two dozen FBI agents and technicians showed up at Donald Trump’s Florida home to execute a search warrant to obtain any government-owned documents that might be in the possession of Trump but are required to be delivered to the Archives under the provisions of the 1978 Presidential Records Act. (In response to the Hillary Clinton email scandal, Trump himself signed a law in 2018 that made it a felony to remove and retain classified documents.)
The act establishes that presidential records are the property of the U.S. government and not a president’s private property. Put in place after Watergate to avoid the abuses of the Nixon administration, the law imposes strict penalties for failure to comply. “Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined” $2,000, up to three years in prison or “shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.”
The act, and concerns about the illegal possession of classified “national defense information” are the bases for the search warrant, according to the two sources. The raid had nothing to do with the January 6 investigation or any other alleged wrongdoing by the former president.
The road to the raid began a year-and-a-half ago, when in the transition from the Trump administration to that of President Joe Biden, there were immediate questions raised by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as to whether the presidential records turned over to the federal agency for historical preservation were complete or not.
In February, Archivist David Ferriero testified before Congress that his agency began talking with Trump’s people right after they left office and that the Trump camp had already returned 15 boxes of documents to the Archives. Ferriero said that in those materials, the Archives discovered items “marked as classified national security information,” unleashing further inquiries as to whether Trump continued to possess classified material.
The basic outlines of the facts surrounding this timeline have been confirmed by the former president. He has previously said that he was returning any official records to the Archives, labeling any confusion in the matter as “an ordinary and routine process to ensure the preservation of my legacy and in accordance with the Presidential Records Act.” He also claimed the Archives “did not ‘find’ anything” in what he had already been returned, suggesting that there was nothing sensitive. He said the documents had inadvertently shipped to Florida during the six-hour transition period in which his belongings were moved.
According to the Justice Department source, the Archives saw things differently, believing that the former White House was stonewalling and continued to possess unauthorized material. Earlier this year, they asked the Justice Department to investigate.
In late April, the source says, a federal grand jury began deliberating whether there was a violation of the Presidential Records Act or whether President Trump unlawfully possessed national security information. Through the grand jury process, the National Archives provided federal prosecutors with copies of the documents received from former President Trump in January 2022. The grand jury concluded that there had been a violation of the law, according to the Justice Department source.
In the past week, the prosecutor in the case and local Assistant U.S. Attorney went to Florida magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart in West Palm Beach to seek approval for the search of Donald Trump’s private residence. The affidavit to obtain the search warrant, the intelligence source says, contained abundant and persuasive detail that Trump continued to possess the relevant records in violation of federal law, and that investigators had sufficient information to prove that those records were located at Mar-a-Lago—including the detail that they were contained in a specific safe in a specific room.
“In order for the investigators to convince the Florida judge to approve such an unprecedented raid, the information had to be solid, which the FBI claimed,” says the intelligence source.
According to experts familiar with FBI practices, Judge Reinhart reviewed the prosecutor’s evidence and asked numerous questions about the sources and the urgency. The judge signed a search warrant allowing the FBI to look for relevant material and the FBI then planned the operation, wanting to conduct the raid while Trump was spending time at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. A Secret Service source who spoke on background said the Secret Service director was given advance warning and was later told the specifics of the raid.
Because the Secret Service is still responsible for protecting the former president, his family, and his property, the FBI had to coordinate with the Secret Service to gain access to the grounds.
A convoy of unmarked black SUVs and a Ryder rental truck filled with about three dozen FBI special agents and technicians entered the gates in the early evening. Heavily armed Secret Service agents were also visibly present at the gates. The Palm Beach Police Department was also present at the scene.
The entire operation was conducted relatively stealthily. No FBI people were seen in their iconic blue windbreakers announcing the presence of the Bureau. And though local law enforcement was present, the Palm Beach Police Department was careful to tweet on Tuesday that it “was not aware of the existence of a search warrant nor did our department assist the FBI in the execution of a search warrant.”
According to news reports, some 10-15 boxes of documents were removed from the premises. Donald Trump said in a statement that the FBI opened his personal safe as part of their search. Trump attorney Lindsey Halligan, who was present during the multi-hour search, says that the FBI targeted three rooms—a bedroom, an office and a storage room. That suggests that the FBI knew specifically where to look.
“This unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate,” former President Trump said in a statement. He called the raid “prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024.”
Though Trump and his Republican Party allies are portraying the raid as politically motivated, it is likely the unprecedented nature of the raid on the property of a former president will have the greatest reverberation. Even Trump’s political rivals have rallied in condemning the FBI.
Former Vice President Mike Pence tweeted that “no former President of the United States has ever been subject to a raid of their personal residence in American history.” Mike Pompeo, Trump’s Secretary of State and CIA director, tweeted that Attorney General Merrick Garland “must explain why 250 yrs of practice was upended w/ this raid. I served on Benghazi Com[mittee] where we proved Hillary possessed classified info. We didn’t raid her home.”
The Biden White House says the president was not briefed about the Mar-a-Lago raid and knew nothing about it in advance. “The Justice Department conducts investigations independently and we leave any law enforcement matters to them,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday afternoon. “It would not be appropriate for us to comment on any ongoing investigations.”
As U.S. President Joe Biden, appearing via teleconference, looks on, Attorney General Merrick Garland attends a meeting of the Task Force on Reproductive Healthcare Access during an event at the White House complex August 3, 2022 in Washington, DC.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
The senior Justice Department source says that Garland was regularly briefed on the Records Act investigation, and that he knew about the grand jury and what material federal prosecutors were seeking. He insists, though, that Garland had no prior knowledge of the date and time of the specific raid, nor was he asked to approve it. “I know it’s hard for people to believe,” says the official, “but this was a matter for the U.S. Attorney and the FBI.”
FBI director Christopher Wray ultimately gave his go-ahead to conduct the raid, the senior Justice official says. “It really is a case of the Bureau misreading the impact.”
Former U.S. President Donald Trump leaves Trump Tower to meet with New York Attorney General Letitia James for a civil investigation on August 10, 2022 in New York City.
Trump announced in an emailed statement he had invoked his Fifth Amendment right against making self-incriminating statements shortly after arriving for the court-ordered interview under oath at James’ offices in New York City.
“I once asked, ‘If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?’ Now I know the answer to that question,” Trump said in that furious statement, which claimed James is a renegade prosecutor with a vendetta against him and his company.
“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 said.
In 2016 Trump suggested that people who cite the Fifth Amendment when being questioned are guilty of something.
A spokeswoman for James did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s move.
The attorney general is focused on allegations that the Trump Organization improperly reported the stated valuations of some of its real estate assets for financial gain, in the form of better terms on loans and insurance, and tax benefits.
That search was related to an ongoing investigation into whether laws were broken when boxes of White House records — which included some documents marked as classified — ended up at Mar-a-Lago instead of the National Archives.
Judge Arthur Engoron also wrote that if the Trumps invoked the Fifth Amendment, their refusal to answer questions cannot be used against them in a criminal prosecution.
But Engoron went on to note that a jury in a civil case is allowed to draw “a negative inference” when a party to the case “invokes that right against self-incrimination.” In other words, James could argue to a jury that it should assume Trump has conceded her claims against him by refusing to answer her questions.
The Trumps had asked Engoron to block the subpoenas, or at least stay their enforcement until the conclusion of a parallel criminal probe of the Trump Organization by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
Former US President Donald Trump waves while walking to a vehicle in New York City on August 10, 2022. Donald Trump on Wednesday declined to answer questions under oath in New York over alleged fraud at his family business, as legal pressures pile up for the former president whose house was raided by the FBI just two days ago.
Stringer | Afp | Getty Images
Trump has denied wrongdoing in all the pending probes involving him.
Trump said he decided he had “absolutely no choice” but to plead the Fifth in James’ deposition following the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago “because the current Administration and many prosecutors in this Country have lost all moral and ethical bounds of decency.”
In a post on his social media platform early Wednesday, he also accused James, who is Black, of being “racist,” a charge he has also previously leveled at her and two other Black prosecutors who are separately investigating him.
Trump and two of his adult children, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, for months had resisted complying with subpoenas from James demanding their testimony under oath for her probe.
Eric Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right more than 500 times when he was questioned under oath in the probe in October 2020, according to a court filing in January.
While campaigning for president in 2016, Trump in a speech in Iowa blasted some staffers of his Democratic opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for invoking the Fifth Amendment when they were questioned by a House select committee investigating the attack on American diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya.
“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 asked at that time.
Trump’s refusal to testify Wednesday made even more dramatic a week that began with what is believed to be the first-ever search of a former president’s residence by federal law enforcement agents as part of a criminal probe.
Monday’s raid sparked a political firestorm, with Republicans harshly criticizing the FBI — which is led by Director Chris Wray, a Trump appointee — and demanding answers about the reasons for it from Attorney General Merrick Garland, a nominee of President Joe Biden.
The Department of Justice has not revealed details about the search warrant that the FBI executed.
Legal experts say Trump’s lawyers are in possession of a copy of that search warrant and that they can disclose its contents if they choose. The warrant and a related affidavit in support of it would detail what the FBI was looking for and how the agency believed there was probable cause that a crime or crimes had been committed that related to that evidence.
But Trump’s team does not plan to release a copy of the warrant, a source close to Trump told NBC News.
Trump and his family and business are the focus of multiple active investigations at the state and federal level.
In addition to the probe of records at Mar-a-Lago, the Justice Department is reportedly investigating events leading to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot by thousands of Trump supporters, who for hours disrupted the confirmation of Biden’s electoral victory by a joint session of Congress.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office last year charged the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer with a criminal scheme to evade taxes in compensation paid to executives.
In Georgia, a special state grand jury is investigating possible criminal efforts by Trump and others to interfere in the 2020 presidential election in that state as part of a nationwide push to overturn Biden’s victory in the race for the White House.
On Tuesday, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., upheld a lower court ruling dismissing an effort by Trump to block the House Ways and Means Committee from obtaining several years of his federal income tax returns and those of a number of Trump business entities from the Treasury Department.
The committee has said it wants those records to review how the IRS is complying with a law that requires annual audits of the tax returns of sitting presidents.
FBI agents scoured Melania Trump’s wardrobe and spent several hours combing through Donald Trump’s private office, breaking open his safe and rifling through drawers when they raided the former First Family’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida Monday morning.
The Post has learned that the search warrant used by the FBI to enter the palatial Palm Beach property focused solely on presidential records and evidence of classified information being stored there.
A source close to the former president expressed concern that FBI agents or DOJ lawyers conducting the search could have “planted stuff” because they would not allow Trump’s attorneys inside the 128-room building to observe the operation, which lasted more than nine hours.
The raid by over 30 plain clothes agents from the Southern District of Florida and the FBI’s Washington Field Office extended through the Trump family’s entire 3,000-square-foot private quarters, as well as to a separate office and safe, and a locked basement storage room in which 15 cardboard boxes of material from the White House were stored.
Feds arrived at 9 a.m. and didn’t leave until 6:30 p.m.
An eyewitness to the raid said all of the boxes were confiscated by federal agents Monday, but it is unknown if anything else was taken as no itemized list of items was provided by the FBI.
Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower in NYC Tuesday night.Gregory P. MangoThe Justice Department and FBI raided former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home Monday.Larry MaranoThe feds reportedly stayed at the residence from 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.GIORGIO VIERA/AFP via Getty ImagesFBI agents even scoured Melania Trump’s wardrobe during the raid.GIORGIO VIERA/AFP via Getty Images
The boxes contain documents and mementos from Trump’s presidency, reportedly including letters from Barack Obama and Kim Jong Un, and other correspondence with world leaders.
A legal source said that the boxes had been packed up by the General Services Administration and shipped to Mar-a-Lago when Trump left office in January 2020.
Trump’s attorneys, led by Evan Corcoran, had been cooperating fully with federal authorities on the return of the documents to the National Archives and Records Administration, according to sources.
An interior view of the living room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home circa 2000.Marc Serota/Getty imagesThe agents scoured the home’s entire 3,000-square-foot perimeter.Marc Serota/Getty imagesAn eyewitness described the demeanor of the agents as “arrogant.”Scott Keeler/Tampa Bay Times via ZUMA Wire
In May, Corcoran granted access into Mar-a-Lago’s windowless storage room to FBI agents who spent several hours searching through the boxes. Trump stopped by the basement to say hello at one point, says someone who was there.
The Trump family since has decamped for the summer to his golf estate in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Mar-a-Lago is closed for the season and only a skeleton staff, including groundskeepers, were present during Monday’s raid.
Access to the 20-acre private country club is believed to have been granted by heavily armed US Secret Service (USSS) agents stationed at the front gates and toting M4 carbines. Lawyers for the former president, who were caught off guard by the raid, arrived an hour later.
The FBI would not have executed a warrant without notifying the Secret Service first, according to a retired high ranking USSS agent.
“USSS legal counsel probably would’ve directed [them] to see copy of warrant and then step back.”
Once inside the air-conditioned, white marble-clad private quarters, agents fanned out to search every room, while shocked staff were instructed by Trump’s lawyers to unlock doors and provide the FBI access to every room, including the sumptuous Versailles Master Bedroom, renovated by Melania two years ago.
Another group of agents, including a professional safe cracker, moved to a separate part of the enormous 1924 Spanish stucco building to search Trump’s office and safe.
The demeanor of the three DOJ lawyers who accompanied the FBI was described by one eyewitness as “arrogant,” and they repeatedly told Trump representatives: “We have full access to everything. We can go everywhere.”
Despite the sweltering 91 degrees temperature Monday, Trump’s lawyers were forbidden by the feds to shelter inside the cool lobby, or to observe the search in any way, but were left outside in the baking sun near a parking lot.
The feds instructed Trump’s representatives to switch off the security cameras but they refused.
Trump has ripped the raid of Mar-a-Lago as a political ploy.REUTERSA member of the Secret Service is seen in front of Trump’s Tuesday.GIORGIO VIERA/AFP via Getty ImagesTrump’s lawyers were reportedly forbidden to observe the raid as agents took boxes from the home.Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images
August 9, 2022 at 05:07PM Spineless: Republican Senate Leadership Silent on FBI Raid of Trump — Talking About Tax Cuts Instead
Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) doesn’t answer the question about the FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. pic.twitter.com/tYjrkLZ2Gl
Republican Senate leadership is conspicuously silent over the FBI’s raid of former President Donald Trump on Monday.
Rather than condemning the FBI’s unprecedented raid against a former Republican president, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Minority Whip John Thune (S.D.) remained silent or tweeted about tax cuts on Tuesday.
Talk about tone-deaf.
McConnell still hasn’t issued a statement regarding the weaponized FBI.
Meanwhile, Thune tweeted about a fair he attended with family on Tuesday.
Fortunately, Senate Republican Conference Chair John Barasso (Wyo.) and Senate Republican Conference Vice Chair Joni Ernst (Iowa) did condemn the FBI’s actions against Trump on Tuesday.
Over in the House, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy released a statement Monday evening following the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago warning Attorney General Merrick Garland to “preserve your documents and clear your calendar” when Republicans take back the House in 2023.
The House Judiciary GOP, headed by Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio), also issued a statement Monday night, asking, “Doesn’t the FBI have better things to do than harass the former PRESIDENT?”
When will McConnell and Thune, the two most powerful Republicans in the Senate, get with the program and join the rest of the GOP leadership and base?
CBS has censored its own documentary investigative reporting after an avalanche of pushback from supporters of Ukraine and its military. The segment highlighted that tons of weaponry shipped from the United States to the country’s military has gone missing, and sounded the alarm as billions in dollars more have been pledged by the Biden administration.
“CBS partially retracted a documentary in which it said that shipments of weapons to Ukraine from the US had been going missing,” Insider reports Monday. “CBS tweeted on Monday that it had removed a a video promoting the documentary that included a months-old quote saying most aid was not making it to Ukraine’s front lines.” Below is the deleted tweet, with the offending line of “30% of it [US-supplied arms and munitions] reaches its final destination.”
The segment, titled “Arming Ukraine” was published days ago, and follows on the heels of Pentagon and US intelligence officials issuing similar warnings that there are few mechanisms in place to legitimately track the arms flowing into the country. One admin official even described in April that, “we have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero. It drops into a big black hole, and you have almost no sense of it at all after a short period of time.”
The fresh CBS reporting added to these concerns, quoting the the head of a Lithuania-based organization supplying the Ukrainian military, Jonas Ohman, who said bluntly:
“All of this stuff goes across the border, and then something happens, kind of like 30% of it reaches its final destination.”
Ohman stressed that actually getting the weapons to the designated Ukrainian army units involves having to navigate an array of “power lords, oligarchs [and] political players.” This also as there have been persistent reports that some weapons end up on the black market, or might possibly be moved outside Ukraine.
A senior crisis adviser with Amnesty International also told CBS in the documentary, “What is really worrying is that some countries that are sending weapons do not seem to think that it is their responsibility to put in place a very robust oversight mechanism.”
Officials with the Ukrainian government promptly accused the mainstream US network of playing into “Russian propaganda”.
Along with a widespread social media backlash from Kiev’s supporters and pundits, this was apparently enough for CBS to announce it is “updating” the segment, with some of the offending lines now dropped…
The Ukrainian government further put out a dubious claim that“all received equipment is accounted for” – this despite months of Pentagon officials warning that this isn’t the case.
Unsurprisingly, Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, has demanded that CBS News conduct an internal investigation to get to the bottom of things.
There’s of late been growing scrutiny placed on the Ukrainian side, after Russia and Putin have long been the main focus of Western mainstream media reporting. It appears that efforts to “police” western MSM reports to deflect any possible criticism of Kiev whatsoever during the war is now ramping up.
Democrats’ ‘Inflation Reduction’ Bill To Make The IRS Larger Than FBI, Border Patrol, State Department Combined
The Senate on Sunday passed the Democrats’ sweeping economic package that would allocate billions of taxpayer dollars to facilitate the expansion of the Internal Revenue Service’s workforce.
The IRS would receive $80 billion if H.R. 5376, the $750 billion “Inflation Reduction Act” passes the House and lands on Biden’s desk. The funding would mark a 600 percent increase from 2021 when the bureau received $12.6 billion.
The reconciliation package would also double the current IRS workforce by hiring an additional 87,000 employees to the bureau’s staff of 78,661 employees, a move that would make the IRS larger than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI and Border Patrol.
“The Pentagon houses roughly 27,000 employees, according to the Defense Department, while a human resources fact sheet says the State Department employs just over 77,243 staff. The FBI employs approximately 35,000 people, according to the agency’s website, and Customs and Border Protection says it employs 19,536 Border Patrol agents,” the Washington Free Beacon reports.
Democrats claim the majority of additional revue from IRS audits would come from the wealthy upper class, but a study from the Joint Committee on Taxation shows the audits would cripple the middle class, the publication notes:
The additional IRS funding is integral to the Democrats’ reconciliation package. A Congressional Budget Office analysis found the hiring of new IRS agents would result in more than $200 billion in additional revenue for the federal government over the next decade. More than half of that funding is specifically earmarked for “enforcement,” meaning tax audits and other responsibilities such as “digital asset monitoring.”
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The majority of new revenue from IRS audits and scrutiny will come from those making less than $200,000 a year, according to a study from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. The committee found that just 4 to 9 percent of money raised will come from those making more than $500,000, contrary to Democrats’ claims that new IRS agents are necessary to target millionaires and billionaires who hide income.
The Senate voted to pass H.R. 5376 on a party-line vote, with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking the tie. The bill goes to the House, where it will likely pass.
GOP lawmakers warn the Democrat’s attempt to expand the IRS is an attempt to further weaponize the federal bureau against the middle class.
“Those IRS agents are designed to come after you, they’re not designed to come after the billionaires and the big corporations. They’re designed to come after small businesses and working families across this country,” cautioned Sen. Ted Cruz, R. -Texas, on Sunday. “The Democrats are making the IRS bigger than the Pentagon, plus the Department of State, plus the FBI, plus the Border Patrol combined. This is a massive power grab.”
“I introduced an amendment to say, ‘don’t create 87,000 new IRS agents’ — every Democrat voted ‘no,’” Cruz continued. “They are bound and determined to try to ram this bill through.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R. -SC, warns the legislation under the guise of inflation is a “fraud” and a “lie.”
“The CBO says next year, inflation will go up or down 0.1 percent. That’s not much of a reduction,” Graham explained on a Friday appearance on FNC’s Fox and Friends. “This bill has tax increases on imported oil. The taxes in the bill will be passed on to consumers at the $75,000 or below level. The subsidies for Obamacare go to people who make $300,000 and $400,000 as a family of four. It is a bunch of bs that it will reduce inflation. It is about as accurate as saying the border’s secure and the Taliban didn’t know Zawahiri was in Kabul. This is a fraud. It’s a lie. It’s going to make every problem worse.”
Lindsey Graham Nods in Agreement as ‘Da Nang Dick’ Blumenthal Mocks Americans For Being Freaked Out Over an Army of 87,000 New IRS Agents (VIDEO)
The Democrats’ tax-and-spend bill making its way through the senate adds 87,000 new IRS agents to an already politicized agency.
The so-called ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ will give $79.6 billion to the IRS over the next 10 years.
The Wall Street Journal said the new army of IRS agents will target the middle and upper-middle class.
Senator Richard ‘Da Nang Dick’ Blumenthal (D-CT) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) Sunday morning appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” to discuss Biden’s massive spending bill.
Lindsey Graham laughed as Senator Blumenthal mocked Americans rightfully concerned about a new army of 87,000 IRS agents.
“The idea that there’s gonna be this army of IRS agents descending on the average American is just preposterous,” Blumenthal said as Lindsey Graham laughed and nodded in agreement.
According to new analysis, the IRS audits the poor at 5 times the rate of everyone else, CBS News reported.
Tax season is a fraught time for taxpayers, who are understandably eager to get their refunds quickly and who may fret that processing hiccups could delay their checks. But some Americans may have more grounds for concern than others: low-income households with less than $25,000 in annual earnings.
This group is five times as likely to be audited by the IRS as everyone else, according to a new analysis of IRS data by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. About 13 tax returns out of 1,000 filed by those earning less than $25,000 were audited in the fiscal year ended September 30, compared with a rate of 2.6 for every 1,000 returns for people with incomes above $25,000, TRAC found.
The reason is a rise in what are known as “correspondence audits,” a review of a tax return that’s typically handled by the IRS via letters and phone calls, as opposed to the typically more complex face-to-face audits. More than half of the correspondence audits initiated by the IRS last year involved low-income people who claimed the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), TRAC found.
The IRS also has a history of targeting conservative groups.
Lois Lerner, the controversial director of the tax-exempt organizations division at the Internal Revenue Service, has a long sordid history of targeting conservatives.
Under the direction of Lois Lerner, the Federal Election Commission sued the Christian Coalition in the 1990s. She harassed the Christian Coalition for three election cycles. Eventually, she lost her case. At one point Lerner even asked a targeted conservative if Pat Robertson prayed over him. (Sound familiar?)
Conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch obtained IRS documents in 2018 revealing backstabber Senator John McCain’s former staff director urged the IRS, including the corrupt Lois Lerner to engage in “financially ruinous” targeting of conservative Tea Party groups.
Alex Jones Ordered to Pay $49.3M in Sandy Hook ‘Show Trial’
Alex Jones has been ordered to pay over $49 million in damages to the parents of one Sandy Hook victim for “defamation” and “intentional infliction of emotional distress” for calling the shooting a “hoax” nearly one decade ago.
Owen Shroyer reacts to verdict live on Friday’s War Room.
“In Texas, there are statutory limits on punitive damages, with a per-defendant cap of two times the amount of economic damages, plus the amount of noneconomic damages found by the jury—the latter part not to exceed $750,000,” Bloomberg Law reports.
“Judge Maya Guerra Gamble of the 459th District Court in Travis County may reduce the punitive damages given those caps, and Jones’ attorneys said immediately after the verdict that they would file a motion to reduce the punitive award.”
