Of course, Mr. Trump’s lawyers had the warrant and corresponding receipts for the items seized by the FBI and could have done this at any time. Now he must decide if it’s worth fighting in court or if he should release the search warrant himself.
Whether Trump agrees or disagrees, and whether a judge will open the warrants and receipts, remains to be seen.
don’t expect
By the way, the most important thing is not unsealed.
“The most detailed document here is the affidavit,” said Elie Honig, CNN’s legal officer. CNN analyst and former federal prosecutor. “This is usually a 20, 40, 100-page document, arranged chapters and verses by the prosecutor. Here you have all the evidence to point to the probable cause.”
Neither Trump nor his attorney have seen the document, and Garland has not spoken about opening it.
Enough to quiet the ruckus?
Granting public access to the warrants shows that the Justice Department and FBI are operating within the law, despite Trump’s statements.
After a few years of a relatively mediocre and drama-free Biden administration, it was a big flogging back in the Trump era — when the country’s government regularly seemed to be on the brink of implosion — the former president. accused the country’s law enforcement of a “witch-hunting” apparatus.
invert channel Ask Fox and you’ll hear unsubstantiated theories that the DOJ is fishing.
Michael Mukassy, who served as Attorney General under George W. Bush, appeared on Fox after the Garland case and said, “There’s been a series of activities going on in connection with January 6th, but then… , this separate investigation is said to have nothing to do with January 6.” remarks. “It’s hard, but they put 30 of his FBI agents in there and probably seized documents that everyone knew was there.”
there is a mysterious eyewitness
There are also new reports that hints from witnesses sparked a search after agents recovered a box of documents in June under a grand jury subpoena.
Trump’s former chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, speculated that a witness would have to be someone very close to the former president to even learn about the Mar-a-Lago safe.
“If you know where the safe is, and if you know that the documents are in ten boxes in the basement, you’re pretty close to the president.
criminal investigation, The National Archives found highly classified documents among materials recovered from Mar-a-Lago in January and referred the criminals to the Department of Justice.
Fifteen of the boxes contained several materials that were part of the Special Access Program (SAP), according to sources familiar with what the archives found in the boxes. It’s a classification that includes protocols that severely restrict people. This led to an FBI interview with an aide to this week’s grand jury subpoena and a court-authorized search and seizure of documents.
Why are these documents public domain?
Despite subpoenas and negotiations, President Trump’s attempt to keep documents from his presidency out of the National Archives is, as is often the case during the Trump presidency, entirely unprecedented.
As to why the public owns presidential documents, it is a relatively recent development and, like so many restrictions on the presidency, is rooted in the Watergate scandal.
Historian Timothy Naphtali, professor at New York University and former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, told me the full story. Edited for length and flow, his words are italicized and I added some subheadings.
After resigning, Nixon wanted tapes and papers
A few days after Nixon resigned, a van arrived in front of the White House. And a van was there to pick up Nixon’s papers and his tapes.
And the Ford administration thought, “Oh my God, what am I going to do?”
So they went to a lawyer’s office and asked, “Who owns Nixon’s tapes and his papers?” (Naphtali paraphrases here and above.)
Presidents owned newspapers before Nixon
The head of the General Counsel Office at the time was a lawyer named Antonin Scalia. And Antonin Scalia said the president will. It is a U.S. tradition dating back to the days of George Washington that presidents own their papers, and their papers include anything given to the president or made by staff. .
There was no distinction between public and private documents. It was very similar to how the King and Queen of England managed their documents.
There was nothing written about this in the Constitution and there was no law.
Congress didn’t get involved because it was an executive matter and public opinion wasn’t going to force the president to release their material.
Nixon traded access to his papers in exchange for his pardon
Richard Nixon said OK, they were mine and I had the right to take them back to California.
The Ford administration found it problematic because if they handed over the documents and tapes to Nixon, people might see this as a cover-up.
As such, the Ford administration sought an agreement with Nixon to make the documents available for trial and prevent them from being destroyed for a period of time.
That agreement was part of the agreement that led to the amnesty. Richard Nixon had to agree to this for Ford to pardon him.
Nixon agrees. Ford pardons.
Congress Intervenes and Passes Law to Seize Nixon Papers
And Congress finds out and says: But then Nixon can destroy anything that hasn’t been summoned. (Naphtali paraphrases it here.)
Congress then passed a law called the Presidential Recording and Preservation Act of 1974, which seized virtually all Nixon materials and considered them public property.
Nixon’s papers seized.this was a big deal
This was unprecedented in US history. Totally unprecedented. No presidential document has ever been treated this way. All previous presidents viewed presidential materials as personal documents. This includes when the CIA gave the president something national security related. All of that.
Just because something is private doesn’t mean the president is allowed to show it off at the golf club.
Congress does this anyway. And then the Nixon tapes were seized, and the Nixon materials were seized.they don’t go to san clemente (where Nixon lived in California).
Nixon brings Congress to court.he also wanted a salary
Nixon cries foul. He says, “Wait a minute. Why am I treated differently than all other presidents?”
Nixon said, “I own these things. It’s not right. It’s unconstitutional and against the spirit of our tradition.” So he went to court and said, “You took my property from me. You are robbing, you are actually robbing property.”
He both wanted control over these documents, but also wanted compensation in case they were lost. Basically, he said, “Listen, these papers have value, and you may need this money when you retire. I owe you money.” (Naftali paraphrases it here and above. )
Supreme Court upheld Congress
All the court had to figure out was what the actual differences between the private presidential documents were.
There was a series of incidents that laid the foundation for the definition of public and private that would be enshrined in law by the Presidential Records Act of 1978.
Congress has decided to pass laws establishing what is public and what is private regarding presidential records.
This means the public owns the president’s records
That means they are owned by Americans. Because they are classified, Americans may not yet be allowed to see them. But at least having ownership means the president couldn’t destroy them.
That’s why this was important. A president had to treat some of the products of his regime as someone else’s, so he could not arbitrarily destroy it.
So the Presidential Records Act is a product of the Watergate era. And it is the result of the American people and Congress agreeing on the presidency’s powers, concluding that it is too powerful and that the president has taken advantage of areas of law the Constitution doesn’t touch.
Is an FBI investigation worth this?
Naphtali claimed that all of this had to be explained repeatedly during and after his presidency, so there is no valid excuse to obtain the documents.
In addition, Naftali insisted the government would provide secure storage so that the former president could access his documents at any time.
Stirring up Trump supporters and uniting the Republicans behind him when I asked if it was worth the FBI’s search for Mar-a-Lago to protect documents under this law , he was not very clear:
That decision should not have been based on politics. Considering the possibility of crime, it should have been done after understanding the appropriate measures. And I’ll reserve judgment until I know what they were trying to recover.
There is no doubt that the U.S. government, and that is all of us, cares about the safety and protection of classified information, as national security is in the interest of all of us.
And the thing is, after talking with President Trump’s representatives for quite some time, our national security is somehow endangered, and possibly endangered, by the total lack of support the Department of Justice was getting from Donald. That is why the government concluded that they were exposed. Mr Trump and his representatives.
I warn everyone who loves this country not to judge too quickly about the political costs of holding Donald Trump accountable.
In modern times, no former president has gone to war against our constitution. Richard Nixon objected to the handling of his material, went to the Supreme Court and accepted the results. He did not go to war with our Constitution.
Source: www.cnn.com
