Eric Trump in an interview with the
Daily Mail revealed astounding details regarding the FBI raid
conducted at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on Monday.
The raid
was conducted by over 30
plainclothes 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.
The raid lasted for
the equivalent of a working day, it began at 9 a.m. and ended at around 6:30
p.m. when the agents left.
Among the most
startling revelation was that FBI agents initially refused to hand over the
search warrant for their raid on Mar-a-Lago to Donald Trump’s lawyer Christina
Bobb. They only showed it to her from about 10 feet away.
Bobb was left in perplexity as to why
a lawyer for the person's home being raided by the FBI was not able to see
or obtain a copy of the search warrant. Bobb said that the supporting
documentation for the warrant describing the probable cause was sealed.
The
federal magistrate judge Bruce Reinhart who signed off on the warrant switched
from his job as a federal prosecutor to working as a defense attorney for
individuals connected to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Reinhart also donated
$1,000 to Obama’s presidential campaign and $1,000 to Obama’s Victory Fund.
Bobb also said she
was ordered to stand on the outskirts of the Mar-a-Lago property i.e. in the
driveway throughout the raid while the temperature was a sweltering 91 degrees
with high humidity.
The demeanor of
the three DOJ lawyers who accompanied the FBI was described as “arrogant,”
and they repeatedly
told Trump representatives: “We have full access to everything. We can go
everywhere.”
Eric said the 30
agents who arrived at the property asked staff to turn security cameras off,
but the request was wisely refused. The enabled them to see how the FBI
raiding areas of the property that Eric said 'shouldn't have been'
Both President Trump
and his lawyer remain rightly concerned about the FBI planting evidence.
The New
York Post also revealed that the FBI spent
several hours scouring through Donald Trump’s private office even breaking
open his safe and rifling through drawers.
They searched the
master bedroom, known as the Versailles Room, which Melania Trump renovated two
years ago, and rummaged through the former first lady’s wardrobe and searched
through her clothing.
Trump's attorneys,
led by Evan Corcoran told the New York Post that they were 'cooperating fully'
with federal authorities to arrange the return of the documents, with the
process beginning in May 2021 when it was noticed that some records were
missing.
In January 2022, some
of the documents were returned, and in February this year, the news became
public.
In early June, four
top DOJ officials traveled to Mar-a-Lago to speak with the former president's
attorneys about the documents.
The Justice
Department has been investigating the ‘mishandling of classified information’
since the National Archives and Records Administration said it had received
from Mar-a-Lago 15 boxes of White House records, including documents containing
classified information, earlier this year.
Trump's team showed
the government officials where Trump was storing documents - in a basement
room. Investigators reportedly observed that some of the files there were
marked as classified.
By law, all presidential correspondence and documentation have to
be handed over to the National Archives.
Former top Trump administration official, Kash Patel, told
Breitbart that a report claiming classified materials were found at Mar-a-Lago was
misleading. The documents were actually already declassified by
President Trump, but the classification markings had not been updated. As
president, Trump had the authority to declassify any classified material in the
government’s possession.
There are multiple federal laws governing the handling of
classified records and sensitive government documents, including statutes that
make it a crime to remove such material and retain it at an unauthorized
location.
The raid, however, doesn't mean prosecutors have determined Trump
committed a crime.
Now for a bit of history.
Back in 2014, the House
Select Committee on Benghazi asked the State Department for all of Hillary
Clinton’s emails. The department didn’t have them all because, instead of only
using the State Department email system (with an email address ending in
@state.gov), Clinton used a personal email address (@clintonemail.com) housed
on private servers located in her home in Chappaqua, New York.
How did the FBI React?
Were there raids on Clinton’s Chappaqua home or rummaging through Hillary’s wardrobe? No!
The FBI issued its
findings in July
2016, it conceded that classified information had been improperly
transmitted. However, they attributed it to carelessness, not an intent to skirt
the law, hence she was let go.
Bill Clinton’s
national security adviser, Sandy Berger, was prosecuted in 2004 for stealing
and even destroying classified documents on the Clinton administration’s mishandling
of terrorism prior to his testimony before the 9/11 Commission. Gen. David
Petraeus was similarly charged for sharing classified documents with his
mistress.
Neither Berger nor
Petraeus’s homes were ever raided. They just pled guilty to misdemeanor charges
and were let go.
What happened at
Mar-a-Lago on Monday seemed like the actions of the Stasi.
The Stasi were the
secret police of East Germany with Soviet help in 1950 by German communists
after World War II. It was responsible for the relentless persecution of
dissidents or anyone who wasn't a complete conformist. The Stasi conducted
surveillance without warrants, espionage, unannounced raids, the accused
weren’t given access to lawyers and prolonged detention without a warrant was
also common.
All government
agencies and even the courts were forcibly drafted and co-opted. If they needed
a warrant the judges became stenographers and gave them what they
want. The Stasi enforced the law selectively. While dissidents were
punished for the smalls of infractions, loyalists to the state could get away
with serious crimes. The celebrated film, The Lives of Others (2006) depicts the horrors of living in East Germany.
The huge difference
is of course that East Germany was a totalitarian dictatorship while
the US is a Democracy.
In a functioning
democracy, every citizen irrespective of their wealth, power, or connections
must be equal before the law. These blatant dual standards only cause
trust in government agencies that should be apolitical to erode.
The citizen,
particularly conservatives have a right to wonder if this could happen to a
former President what chance do they have at receiving fair treatment?
In time there will be
no trust left in law enforcement agencies and that’s when anarchy begins.
The Democrats are ruthlessly gnawing at the roots upon which the nation stands. The question remains will winning elections be enough to bring stop them?
Also appears on American Thinker
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