A Trial Date Is Set in Trump Document Case, so Let's Look Back at the Raid That Started It All

The judge overseeing the Trump document case has set a tentative court date for Aug. 14, giving prosecutors mere weeks to prepare for an unprecedented case against a former president. The Department of Justice asked the judge to invoke the speed trial provision of law to get things going to get rid of Trump before the election. Judge Aileen Cannon says the Fort Pierce, Fla., trial could be delayed due to security concerns, but if there’s justice, she’d grant a motion of summary judgment throwing the whole thing out, considering the fruits of the poisonous tree evidence in the case.

After he was indicted last week, Donald Trump flew to his Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., where he gave a speech that CNN refused to air and swore to supporters that this lawlessness would stop with a Trump administration. He told the story of how Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) sent gunned-up FBI agents to tear apart his home, break into his safe, and snatch his medical records. FBI agents also took confidential personal documents that had nothing to do with what they planned to eventually charge him with espionage.

The charge is about as nonsensical as accusing the former president of being a Russian secret agent using Hillary Clinton’s fake “dossier” as “evidence.” Espionage is a charge that uniquely doesn’t apply to a president.

But that doesn’t matter to the gang at DOJ and the FBI. Some of the same players from D.C. who coordinated the frame-up of Trump as a Russian secret agent, such as Jay Bratt and David Laufman, were involved in the Mar-a-Lago records raid and the espionage charges. Bratt visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago in June of 2022, and the former president and his staff showed him where he was keeping his records. Bratt and his other agent pal walked away with several documents the former president and his staff gave them. Less than two months later, they staged a surprise, early-morning raid with an armed FBI SWAT team to seize the rest.

Laufman was complicit in setting up the spying on CIA asset Carter Page, who volunteered on the Trump campaign (which brings up another series of questions), in the Russian collusion operation to use their two-hop rule to spy on Trump.

And it begs a question: If Bratt and his pals on the 7th floor of the FBI and DOJ headquarters were so hell-bent to prove that the guy who had already survived multiple investigations amounting to less than zero was a person engaging in “espionage,” why would they take Trump’s medical records and attorney-client-privileged documents?

Why did they take this stuff? And did he ever get them back? pic.twitter.com/gKKmyRBqHv

— Victoria Taft, The Adult in the Room, FITF Squad (@VictoriaTaft) June 19, 2023

And did he get them back? It’s believed he did. But you can better believe that this FBI kept copies and they’re sitting in a file somewhere in a file.

Intelligence agents in Operation Get Trump (or whatever they call it) issued their “overly broad” warrant — a document that Attorney General Merrick Garland promised would be “narrowly tailored.” It was so narrowly tailored that civil rights attorney Harvey Silverglate declared it unconstitutional on a recent edition of the Adult in the Room Podcast, not that the Constitution matters to the DOJ anymore since they’ve moved beyond law enforcement to intelligence-gathering on American citizens. You can thank George Bush and Osama bin Laden for turning the FBI into the FSB.

Paul Sperry of the New York Post and RealClearInvestigations reported that even former assistant FBI director Chris Swecker thought the warrant was a “huge, broad search warrant and a huge, broad investigation leveled against the former president” that is “quite wide-ranging.” For example, he said that the warrant called for the seizure of “national defense information [which] doesn’t necessarily include classified material.”

Silverglate and defense attorney Robert Barnes ratified that it’s a general or overly broad warrant. As I explained over the weekend at PJ Media, Silverglate said, “We’re in uncharted waters here. All I can tell you is, I believe this is an assault on Democracy because the powers-that-be are trying to avoid having a popular candidate run for re-election.” The former federal prosecutor turned defense attorney Bill Shipley agreed that the case was an “on its face” effort to Get Trump at whatever cost.

Here’s what the warrant said in part (emphasis added) :

The locations to be searched include the “45 Office,” all storage rooms, and all other rooms or areas within the premises used or available to be used by FPOTUS and his staff and in which boxes or documents could be stored, including all structures or buildings on the estate. It does not include areas currently (i.e. , at the time of the search) being occupied, rented, or used by third parties (such as Mar-a-Largo Members) and not otherwise used or available to be used by FPOTUS and his staff, such as private guest suites.

All physical documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or
other items illegally possessed in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 793, 2071, or 1519, including the following:
a. Any physical documents with classification markings, along with any containers/boxes (including any other contents) in which such documents are located, as well as any other containers/boxes that are collectively stored or found together with the aforementioned documents and containers/boxes;
b. Information, including communications in any form, regarding the retrieval, storage, or transmission of national defense information or classified material;
c. Any government and/or Presidential Records created between January 20, 2017, and January 20, 2021; or
d. Any evidence of the knowing alteration, destruction, or concealment of any government and/or Presidential Records, or of any documents with classification markings.

They wanted everything.

The Post reported that “54 documents removed from the resort were marked “SECRET,” 31 were labeled “CONFIDENTIAL” and another 18 were “TOP SECRET.” They took, “48 empty folders labeled with “CLASSIFIED” banners while another 42 empty folders were labeled “Return to Staff Secretary/Military Aide.” And another “11,179 government documents and photographs seized by the FBI bore no classification markings at all.”

Now that you’re getting the drift that this was an overly broad warrant and therefore unconstitutional, how could a judge sign off?

The Russia collusion hoaxers didn’t want you to know, so they blotted a few things out on the affidavit, but here’s what the prosecutor represented to the judge issuing the warrant before the raid:

…Mar-a-Lago does not include a secure location authorized for the storage of classified information. As such, it appears that since the time classified documents were removed from the secure facilities at the White House and moved to Mar-a-Lago on or around January 20, 2021, they have not been handled in an appropriate manner or stored in an appropriate location. Accordingly, we ask that the room at Mar-a-Lago where the documents had been stored be secured and that all of the boxes that were moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago (along with any other items in that room) be preserved in that room in their current condition until farther notice.

In addition to accusing Trump of taking papers that bureaucrats didn’t want him to have, they claimed the documents were in such danger that they asked Trump to put all documents in the same dangerous place.

The case was formulated in Washington, D.C., and then brought to Florida magistrate Bruce Reinhart, who’d only weeks before recused himself from Trump’s lawsuit against Hillary Clinton for his anti-Trump rantings on social media. But the judge who hated Trump thought something nefarious would be found at Mar-a-Lago that hadn’t presented itself yet.

Based on the foregoing facts and circumstances, I submit 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. Further, I submit that this affidavit supports probable cause for a warrant to search the PREMISES described in Attachment A and seize the items described in Attachment B.

Reinhart just knew the FBI would find something. The boxes taken prior to the raid were a pretext.

On Monday, federal prosecutors went back to Reinhart to slap a gag order on Trump about discovery information his camp would receive from the feds. See, this is how it works; the feds issue PR photos of dozens of boxes that they want you to think contain documents he isn’t supposed to have, and Trump can’t comment.

If the original boxes Trump had turned over were out of order, they would have charged Trump for the contents of those boxes.

– Agents searched Melania's closet and the Trump's Master Bedroom
– Agents scoured the entire 3,000-SF perimeter.
– USSS toting M4 Carbines stationaed at MAL front gate provided access.
– Professional SAFE CRACKER helped search Trump's office

2. pic.twitter.com/Nv3gaBkU5q

— wyntre (@Wyntre999) August 10, 2022

So in addition to 40 years of medical records and passport, the FBI team took Trump’s tax records, rifled through Melania Trump’s under lovelies, and took privileged notes with his attorneys and full boxes of news clippings in what was clearly a pre-textual raid in full Soviet “give me the man and I’ll give you the crime” fashion. In all, thousands of documents were taken and the charges were based on the documents taken during the raid — not the ones the FBI claims gave rise to the search warrant in the first place.

Brit Hume of Fox News may declare Trump’s explanations for not immediately turning over documents to the National Archives “incoherent,” but incoherence isn’t something that lands a former president in the slammer for hundreds of years, as prosecutors requested.

Trump lamented in his speech after the indictment that “A president with his band of thugs, misfits, and Marxists tried to destroy American democracy.” That’s not incoherent. That’s true.

And the circus begins on Aug. 14.

Every time I write one of these expansive stories that poke the bear, I wonder if this will be the day that the Deep State Borg silences me and PJ Media. Will this be the day I get a visit from the Biden IRS or a gunned-up officer who wants to sit down for a friendly inquisition?

The social media companies, at the behest of Democrats, have been preventing you from seeing our brand of opinion journalism for years now. They’re trying to starve us into compliance — or non-existence. PJ Media has been censored, disappeared, thrashed, and throttled by social media companies at the behest of political Leftists. It’s wrong and un-American. That’s where you come in.

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