Trump Documents Case Dismissed

[Didba 5,437]

Lot of arm chair lawyers in this thread…

[IronMan70 3,321]

37 minutes ago, AU9377 said:

Think for a minute.  Documents do not have to be in a folder marked for the contents to be top secret or classified top secret.  Of course they were placed in top secret folders when the evidence was collected.  Right wing media has taken the smallest point of truth and transformed that into a talking point that means very little in a practical sense. 

Why do you think the judge did not dismiss the case because no crime was shown?  She couldn't.  She had to find a way to dismiss the case that was outside the facts of the the indictment.  Therefore, she dismissed by claiming that the Special Counsel didn't have the authority to bring the indictment.  At no point did she conclude that there was no evidence of criminal activity.

What someone doesn't say is often as important or more important than what they do say. 

No, it's because this motion by the defense pertained to Smith's status, not other issues. You are connecting dots that aren't there and drawing a false conclusion.

[IronMan70 3,321]

So this was a half way decent discussion but now it is all mute, because as the title of the thread says, case dismissed.

[AU9377 5,922]

49 minutes ago, IronMan70 said:

So this was a half way decent discussion but now it is all mute, because as the title of the thread says, case dismissed.

Until the 11th Circuit reverses her order.

[AU9377 5,922]

1 hour ago, IronMan70 said:

No, it's because this motion by the defense pertained to Smith's status, not other issues. You are connecting dots that aren't there and drawing a false conclusion.

She denied the motion to dismiss the indictment on June 10th.  Approx 1 month later she dismissed the case due to a procedural motion and her finding that the special counsel lacked authority.

[AU9377 5,922]

18 hours ago, AUFAN78 said:

Show me where I argued for the prosecution of Trump or Biden's document cases. I'll wait. 

I take you at your word. 

[Leftfield 3,309]

1 hour ago, IronMan70 said:

Sure, here are just two. In addition there is the court filing by Jay Bratt, the lead DOJ Prosecutor.

 

FBI Brought Props To Stage Infamous Trump Crime Scene Photo | The Daily Caller

FBI Brought Props To Stage Infamous Trump Crime Scene Photo

The FBI brought props to its raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago for classified documents that were pictured in an infamous photo taken at the alleged crime scene, according to court documents.

Jay Bratt, the lead Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutor now assigned to special counsel Jack Smith’s team, admitted in a recent court filing that FBI agents brought cover sheets reading “top secret” to the raid of Mar-a-Lago to use as placeholders in their gathering of classified documents. The classified documents, however, now appear to be out of order following their seizure, both Trump’s defense attorney and the special counsel have admitted, according to court documents first reported by Declassified with Julie Kelly.

The crime scene photo of classified documents allegedly found at Mar-a-Lago, complete with the bright red “classification” cover sheets, went viral in the weeks after the raid. Corporate media outlets breathlessly reported on the photo and the cover sheets as proof that Trump had been storing classified documents at his Florida property.

“[If] the investigative team found a document with classification markings, it removed the document, segregated it, and replaced it with a placeholder sheet. The investigative team used classified cover sheets for that purpose,” Bratt wrote in a recent filing.

In a May filing, defense attorneys for Trump c0-defendant Waltine Nauta wrote that the placeholders which the FBI brought to the scene to mark classified documents in stacks were out of place.

 

“Following defense counsel’s review of the physical boxes…and the documents produced in classified discovery, defense counsel has learned that the cross-reference provided by the Special Counsel’s Office does not contain accurate information,” the attorneys wrote, according to Kelly.

DOJ and the media have lied about the infamous photo of alleged classified documents seized during FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago. New court filings prove the FBI used cover sheets depicted in the photo during the raid. That's not how the records were found:

New disclosures in Special Counsel Jack Smith's espionage case against Donald Trump reveal the FBI tampered with evidence to create the infamous photo--and DOJ has lied about it for nearly two years.

 

“[Thirteen] boxes or containers contained documents with classification markings, and in all, over one hundred unique documents with classification markings…were seized. Certain of the documents had colored cover sheets indicating their classification status. (Emphasis added.) See, e.g., Attachment F (redacted FBI photograph of certain documents and classified cover sheets recovered from a container in the ‘45 office’),” Bratt wrote in an August 2022 court filing.

Kelly writes that Bratt’s original filing did not explain where those classified document sheets had come from, though later he admitted that the sheets were in fact brought to the scene by FBI agents.

“In other words, in their zeal to stage a phony photo using official classified cover sheets, FBI agents might have failed to accurately match the placeholder sheet with the appropriate document. This is a potentially case-blowing mistake, particularly if the docu

ment in question is one of the 34 records that represents the basis of espionage charges against Trump,” Kelly reported.

In response to Nauta’s filing, Bratt admitted that the placeholders had been rearranged, and that not all of them had been properly matched with the right placeholder sheet, according to a court document.

“In many but not all instances, the FBI was able to determine which document with classification markings corresponded to a particular placeholder sheet,” Bratt wrote in response to the defense attorney’s request for more time.

While Trump is being charged for mishandling classified documents, President Joe Biden had a special counsel of his own investigate him for his handling of similarly classified documents. Despite the FBI seizing documents from Biden’s Delaware home, the photo of the raid showed the president’s documents in boxes, rather than sprawled out with “top secret” placeholders. 

 

The DOJ's Doctored Crime Scene Photo of Mar-a-Lago Raid 

The DOJ's Doctored Crime Scene Photo of Mar-a-Lago Raid

New disclosures in Special Counsel Jack Smith's espionage case against Donald Trump reveal the FBI tampered with evidence to create the infamous photo--and DOJ has lied about it for nearly two years.

 

It is the picture that launched a thousand pearl-clutching articles.

A few weeks after the armed FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, the Department of Justice released a stunning photograph depicting alleged contraband seized from Donald Trump’s Palm Beach estate that day; the image showed colored sheets representing scary classification levels attached to files purportedly discovered in Trump’s private office.

Included as a government exhibit to oppose Trump’s lawsuit requesting a special master to vet the 13,000 items taken from his residence, the crime scene pic immediately went viral—just as Attorney General Merrick Garland, who authorized the unprecedented raid, intended. 

At the time, even regime-friendly mouthpieces questioned the need and optics of the raid; the photo helped juice the DOJ’s justification for the storming of Trump’s castle.

“[The] question of whether Trump had classified material with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort has captured the public’s attention. The photo published by the government appears to answer that question quite affirmatively,” Washington Post resident fact checker Philip Bump wrote on August 31, 2022.

Some of Bump’s colleagues were more hyperbolic. An ex-CIA officer told ABC News the cover sheets indicated the highest level of secrecy, which in the wrong hands could have resulted in murder. “People's lives are truly at stake. Without being melodramatic, anything that helps an adversary identify a human source means life and death," intelligence expert Douglas London melodramatically warned in reaction to the photo.

The New York Times insisted the photo was consistent with how the FBI handles criminal investigations. “[It] is standard practice for the F.B.I. to take evidentiary pictures of materials recovered in a search to ensure that items are properly cataloged and accounted for. Files or documents are not tossed around randomly, even though they might appear that way; they are usually splayed out so they can be separately identified by their markings,” reporters Glenn Thrush and Adam Goldman wrote on August 31, 2022.

Except…that is not what happened.

A Stunt with Potentially Case-Killing Consequences for DOJ

New court filings in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s espionage and obstruction case against Trump and two co-defendants conclusively demonstrate that the government used the cover sheets to deceive the public as well as the court. The photo was a stunt, and one that adds more fuel to this dumpster-fire case.

Jay Bratt, who was the lead DOJ prosecutor on the investigation at the time and now is assigned to Smith’s team, described the photo this way in his August 30, 2022 response to Trump’s special master lawsuit:

“[Thirteen] boxes or containers contained documents with classification markings, and in all, over one hundred unique documents with classification markings…were seized. Certain of the documents had colored cover sheets indicating their classification status. (Emphasis added.) See, e.g., Attachment F (redacted FBI photograph of certain documents and classified cover sheets recovered from a container in the ‘45 office’).”

The DOJ’s clever wordsmithing, however, did not accurately describe the origin of the cover sheets. In what must be considered not only an act of doctoring evidence but willfully misleading the American people into believing the former president is a criminal and threat to national security, agents involved in the raid attached the cover sheets to at least seven files to stage the photo.

Classified cover sheets were not “recovered” in the container, contrary to Bratt’s declaration to the court. In fact, after being busted recently by defense attorneys for mishandling evidence in the case, Bratt had to fess up about how the cover sheets actually ended up on the documents.  

Here is Bratt’s new version of the story, where he finally admits a critical detail that he failed to disclose in his August 2022 filing:

“[If] the investigative team found a document with classification markings, it removed the document, segregated it, and replaced it with a placeholder sheet. The investigative team used classified cover sheets for that purpose.”

But before the official cover sheets were used as placeholder, agents apparently used them as props. FBI agents took it upon themselves to paperclip the sheets to documents—something evident given the uniform nature of how each cover sheet is clipped to each file in the photo—laid them on the floor, and snapped a picture for political posterity.

That raises many troubling questions, to say the least, about the FBI’s handling of the alleged incriminating documents.

For example, who made the on-site determination as to the classification level appropriate for each document? Did agents have security clearance and expertise related to classification? Did the agents know whether the document had been declassified by Trump while still in office?

The hasty assessment also appears to contradict Bratt’s statements in court about the classification status of the seized documents. Bratt told Judge Aileen Cannon during a hearing last year that the records were undergoing a classification review, presumably conducted by the intelligence community, to determine the correct level of secrecy. 

Did the final analysis confirm or dispute the assessments by the field FBI agents who conducted the raid?

Missing Paper Trial and Messy Boxes

But Jack Smith might have bigger problems. During the raid, agents took a box in its entirety if it contained papers with classified markings; the box usually contained other items, which is how the FBI ended up with so many of Trump’s personal belongings.

So, in order to flag the location of the alleged classified record in the box, agents, as Bratt noted, used the cover sheets as placeholders. (The classified records were then placed in a separate secure file.)

But now defense attorneys claim, and the special counsel concedes, that some placeholders do not match the relevant document. “Following defense counsel’s review of the physical boxes…and the documents produced in classified discovery, defense counsel has learned that the cross-reference provided by the Special Counsel’s Office does not contain accurate information,” attorneys representing Trump’s co-defendant Waltine Nauta wrote in a May 1 motion.

The motion forced the special counsel to admit the error. “In many but not all instances, the FBI was able to determine which document with classification markings corresponded to a particular placeholder sheet,” Bratt wrote.

In other words, in their zeal to stage a phony photo using official classified cover sheets, FBI agents might have failed to accurately match the placeholder sheet with the appropriate document. This is a potentially case-blowing mistake, particularly if the document in question is one of the 34 records that represents the basis of espionage charges against Trump.

And there is another issue in connection with the cover sheets. Defense attorneys also noted that in at least one instance, the location of the cover sheet in the physical box didn’t match the FBI’s accounting. “[The] sheet…does not appear for several hundreds of pages later than the FBI Index indicated it would. Defense counsel’s review of these materials calls into question the likelihood that the contents of the physical boxes remains (sic) the same as when they were seized by the FBI on August 8, 2022.”

Which Bratt also admitted is an issue. After the boxes were transported from Florida to the hopelessly corrupt Washington FBI field office (another scandalous aspect of the case since the investigation should have been conducted in southern Florida not in another jurisdiction), a private company took scans of the inside of the boxes. But according to the defense team, the current condition of the boxes does not match the scans taken in August 2022. 

Bratt explained that “there are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans.” He then offered a list of excuses including how some “boxes contain items smaller than standard paper such as index cards, books, and stationary, which shift easily when the boxes are carried, especially because many of the boxes are not full.”

It is safe to assume Judge Cannon will not take these new revelations lightly--particularly since Bratt also had to admit in the same filing that he did not tell her the truth when she asked about the condition of the boxes during a hearing last month. On April 12, Cannon directly asked Bratt, “are the boxes in their original, intact form as seized?” Bratt replied yes, but “with one exception, and that is that the classified documents have been removed and placeholders have been put in the documents [place.]”

Oof.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, Jack Smith’s team might need several thousand words to weasel their way out of this mess.

It's awesome that legitimate law enforcement documents are called "props". The DOJ explained why those covers were used, but you just assume they did it for a photo op? 

The only legitimate concern in anything here is that the documents may have been out of order. That shows sloppiness, but not ill intent. 

The hyper-partisan second article you posted makes inferences and asks questions that are never answered, all with the intent to lead the reader toward the conclusion that the DOJ was setting Trump up. It also doesn't provide full context. When it implies that the covers sheets don't match the documents they are referring to...

The motion forced the special counsel to admit the error. “In many but not all instances, the FBI was able to determine which document with classification markings corresponded to a particular placeholder sheet,” Bratt wrote.

...it doesn't point this out (emphasis mine)....

Smith’s team revealed in the filing that FBI agents carried printed “classified cover sheets” during the Aug. 8, 2022, search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and used them to replace any classified documents they discovered in cardboard Bankers Boxes that littered the former president’s residence.

“The investigative team used classified cover sheets for that purpose, until the FBI ran out because there were so many classified documents, at which point the team began using blank sheets with handwritten notes indicating the classification level of the document(s) seized,” the prosecutors wrote.

Later, they said, the handwritten notes were replaced with more formal placeholder sheets, but some of the handwritten ones may have been left in the boxes as well, complicating efforts to link a placeholder to a specific classified document.

“Any handwritten sheets that currently remain in the boxes do not represent additional classified documents — they were just not removed when the classified cover sheets with the index code were added,” Smith’s team wrote. “In many but not all instances, the FBI was able to determine which document with classification markings corresponded to a particular placeholder sheet.”

Prosecutors say despite the reordering, each box still contains precisely the same material it had in it when it was seized.

 

Considering the number of files found, which seems to have taken the investigators by surprise considering they didn't have enough cover sheets, I think some sloppiness is understandable, particularly with the time constraints.

It's crazy to me that you'll focus on procedural mistakes of the raid, yet still absolve Trump of every effort he made to lie and conceal these documents. Procedural failures should certainly be called out, but this level of pettiness is absurd. The final sentence emphasized above is what you should be focusing on, but you ignore it.

 

[AUDub 11,784]

On 7/15/2024 at 9:29 AM, E'Town4Bama said:

I have wondered why it took so long.

 

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/07/breaking-huge-news-judge-cannon-dismisses-classified-documents/

Because her reasoning is horse***t.

Hunter Biden was prosecuted on these grounds too. He’s gonna challenge the **** out of his (well deserved) conviction over it.