President-elect Donald Trump said on Monday that he would consider a pardon for New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, who was indicted in September.
Read MoreTrump Says He Would Consider Pardon for New York City Mayor Eric Adams
Tag: Mar-a-Lago
Second Assassination Attempt Since July Raises Questions About How Shooter Got Within 500 Yards of Trump
Secret Service agents disrupted the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life in two months, but difficult questions remain on how a would-be assassin with an AK-47 rifle got within 500 yards of the former president while he was golfing and why anti-Trump vitriol in America rages on.
Read MoreDissension, ‘Toxicity’ Plagued Trump’s Secret Service Detail Before Assassination Attempt
Rancor, recriminations, and serious formal misconduct complaints have plagued all levels of the Secret Service detail assigned to protect former President Donald Trump over the last year, distracting the team from its core mission of securing Trump from physical harm and preventing an assassination.
Read MoreDISMISSED: Judge Tosses Trump’s Classified Documents Case over Jack Smith’s Unlawful Appointment
The judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case granted his motion to dismiss the indictment Monday.
Read MoreCommentary: Searching for the Truth About the Raid at Mar-a-Lago
Top officials at the Department of Justice are downplaying recently disclosed documents showing FBI agents were authorized to use deadly force during their 2022 raid of Donald Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.
Responding to Trump’s claim that “Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said the bureau was following “standard operating procedure” as it executed a search warrant on Aug. 8, 2022, regarding classified material that the former president was holding at Mar-a-Lago.
Read MoreAnalysis: 89 Percent of Independents Say Trump Conviction Makes Them Either More Likely to Support Trump or No Difference
15 percent of independents said that the New York City of conviction would make them more likely to support former President Donald Trump in 2024 election against incumbent President Joe Biden, with only 11 percent saying it would make them less likely, an NPR-Marist poll taken May 21 to May 23 shows. 74 percent said it would make no difference.
In addition, the poll had 10 percent of Republicans saying the conviction would make them less likely to vote for Trump if convicted and 7 percent of Democrats saying more likely to vote for Trump, a +3 percent advantage for Biden.
Read MoreCommentary: Judge Cannon Puts Jack Smith on Trial
U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon may have just indefinitely postponed Donald Trump’s espionage and obstruction trial but that doesn’t mean her federal courtroom in Fort Pierce, Florida will lie dormant over the next few months.
In officially vacating the existing May 20 trial date—an impossibility considering the defendant will be in a Manhattan courtroom for the foreseeable future—Cannon declined to set another date, calling it “imprudent” at this stage of the process. She noted a “myriad” of unresolved matters in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s 42-count indictment against the former president and his two co-defendants, Mar-a-Lago employees Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Olivera, for willfully retaining national defense information and attempting to impede the government’s investigation.
Read MoreJulie Kelly Commentary: The DOJ’s Doctored Crime Scene Photo of Mar-a-Lago Raid
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.
Read MoreTrump Whodunnit: Prosecutors Admit Key Evidence in Document Case Has Been Tampered With
In a stunning admission, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team is admitting that key evidence in former President Donald Trump’s classified documents criminal case was altered or manipulated since it was seized by the FBI, and that prosecutors misled the court about it for a period of time.
Read MoreLegal Experts Say Summary Judgment of Fraud Against Trump by NY Judge Contains Legal Abuses
New York Judge Arthur Engoron, a registered Democrat, granted summary judgment against Donald Trump last week in a case alleging real estate fraud by the former president. Not waiting for the trial to begin, where evidence would be produced, experts would testify, and discovery would conclude, Engoron revoked the licenses for Trump’s key properties, including Trump Tower and the Trump International Hotel, and set up a fast timeline to dissolve the Trump Organization and its connected entities. Engoron said Trump and his associates inflated the values of his properties, but several legal experts disagreed.
Viva Frei, a lawyer who hosts a show with fellow lawyer Robert Barnes called Sidebar, broke down his assessment of the case with Barnes in an 18-minute video on Monday. “It would seem that the REAL fraud is coming from the Court and from the corrupt Attorney General,” he said. “A breakdown of the absurdity coming out of New York from last night’s stream.”
Read MoreCommentary: Jack Smith’s Real-Life Bogeyman
One must wonder if Special Counsel Jack Smith checks under his bed every night to make sure a large man wearing an oversized blue suit, long red tie, and MAGA hat isn’t there.
Smith, the public has been assured, is a nerves-of-steel prosecutor who has taken on some of the world’s most dangerous criminals during his time at the U.S. Department of Justice and The Hague. Following Smith’s appointment in November 2022, one former colleague swooned to the New York Times how Smith “has a way about him of projecting calm” and that “people look to him for steady guidance.”
Read MoreWhile Trump Faces Host of Charges, None Filed in Biden Special Counsel Probe on Classified Memos
While former President Donald Trump faces an array of federal charges in two separate cases as a result of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation, no one has yet been charged in a separate special counsel probe of President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents while he was vice president.
In January 2023, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Hur special counsel to investigate the Biden case.
Read MoreRepublicans Condemn New Charges in Trump Classified Docs Case
Conservatives and Republicans condemned a new round of charges against former President Donald Trump in the case involving classified material at Mar-a-Lago.
Special Counsel Jack Smith revealed the new charges in a superseding indictment issued Thursday that included charges against Carlos De Oliveira, a maintenance worker at Mar-a-Lago, the Florida estate owned by former President Trump. Smith initially secured a 37-count indictment against Trump in June.
Read MoreWith New Evidence, Congress Unmasks a Multi-Year Government Plot to Protect Biden, Sully Trump
When the Justice Department discovered from journalists a storage locker containing evidence against ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, a search was executed immediately.
Read MoreCommentary: Trump Again Widens Lead in GOP Nomination After Indictment
“I’ve put everything on the line and I will never yield. I never yield. I will never be deterred. I will never stop fighting for you.”
That was former President Donald Trump in Columbus, Georgia on June 10 in his first appearance after being indicted by the U.S. Justice Department on supposed violations of the Espionage Act over documents Trump says he declassified before leaving office, with Trump unsurprisingly using the prosecution to his political advantage in his 2024 election bid to oust President Joe Biden.
Read MoreTrump Says the DOJ Has Indicted Him in ‘DARK DAY’ for the Country
Former President Donald Trump on Thursday announced that the Department of Justice has indicted him and that he must appear at a Miami courthouse on Tuesday. “The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax, even though Joe Biden has 1850 Boxes at the University of Delaware, additional Boxes in Chinatown, D.C., with even more Boxes at the University of Pennsylvania, and documents strewn all over his garage floor where he parks his Corvette, and which is ‘secured’ by only a garage door that is paper thin, and open much of the time,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Read MoreInternal Memos Call into Question National Archives Narrative to Congress on Trump Documents
For months, the National Archives and Records Administration has insisted it had nothing to do with the federal criminal investigation into memos containing classified markings that were found at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate since it referred the matter to the FBI in February 2022.
“When NARA identified items marked as classified national security information within the 15 boxes, NARA referred this issue to the DOJ,” acting Archivist Debra Wall wrote Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), now the House Intelligence Committee chairman, on August 16. “Since that time, the DOJ has been exclusively responsible for all aspects of this investigation, and NARA has not been involved in the DOJ investigation or any searches that it has conducted.”
Read MoreCommentary: The Real Differences Between the Biden and Trump Troves
Donald Trump for now certainly seems to have had more documents labeled classified at Mar-a-Lago in Florida than did Joe Biden at his various homes in Delaware. Yet otherwise, the comparisons between the two cases, contrary to popular punditry, hardly favor Biden.
Read MoreDemocratic Congressman: ‘No One Can Defend Having Classified Documents’ at Penn Biden Center
A Democratic California congressman this week weighed in on President Joe Biden’s classified-document scandal, characterizing the president’s housing of restricted records in his University of Pennsylvania office and his Delaware home as indefensible. A member of the House Oversight and Armed Services committees, U.S. Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA-17) told Fox News that Biden warrants scrutiny for keeping numerous records he obtained during his earlier service as a U.S. senator and later as vice president. Khanna noted that the law requires classified federal documents to be kept in “sensitive compartmented information facilities” (SCIFs). While presidents can sometimes temporarily designate rooms within their personal properties as SCIFs, Biden has never suggested any spaces in his home or office were deemed to be such areas.
Read MoreAppeals Court Shuts Down Special Master Review of Mar-a-Lago Documents
A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled that a Trump-appointed judge erred in appointing a special master to independently review the documents the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate in August.
An 11th Circuit Court of Appeals panel unanimously determined that U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon was incorrect both to appoint a special master to independently assess Trump’s executive privilege claims and to bar the Department of Justice from conducting its own review, Politico reported.
Read MoreCommentary: It’s Trump vs. The Establishment All Over Again
Since the “red wave” fizzled out, a consensus has quickly emerged in the media that Donald Trump is no longer a viable political force. The newly anointed prince of the Right, according to the tastemakers, is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump’s more palatable, less chaotic protégé. But DeSantis and Trump offer two very different things. DeSantis is a conventional politician with Trump-like qualities, who can, at least according to his fan base, build a popular majority that is beyond Trump’s reach. Trump is a radical outsider to a rigged, illegitimate political system with which he has been at war for seven years, and which his supporters see as an existential threat to their way of life.
Read MoreTrump Scores Another Win in Mar-a-Lago Case
Former President Donald Trump on Thursday scored a major win in the ongoing court battle pertaining to the FBI’s seizure of documents from his Mar-a-Lago estate in early August.
“There shall be no separate requirement on Plaintiff at this stage, prior to the review of any of the Seized Materials, to lodge ex ante final objections to the accuracy of Defendant’s Inventory, its descriptions, or its contents,” wrote U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in the Thursday ruling.
Read MoreSpecial Master Holds First Meeting with Justice Department, Trump Attorneys, in New York
Attorneys for former President Trump and the Justice Department are scheduled to meet Tuesday in New York with the court-appointed special master who is reviewing the documents seized by the FBI during the bureau’s raid of Mar-a-Lago last month.
Read MoreJudge’s Order Exposes FBI Sloppiness, Excessive Evidence Collection at Trump Home
A criminal probe “requested by the incumbent president.” The seizure of clothing, medical records, tax records and 500 pages of attorney-client privileged documents not covered by a warrant. The sharing of privileged documents with investigators.
More than simply appointing a special master to referee an evidence dispute, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon exposed this week a Justice Department search of former President Donald Trump’s home that was initiated by his chief Democrat rival, that was carried out so sloppily that it violated the “least intrusive” mandate in the FBI agent’s manual, and that failed to keep legally-protected materials from falling into the hands of investigators.
Read MoreFormer FBI Boss Warns Prosecutor Might See Trump Search Warrant Tossed Out Entirely
The FBI warrant to search former President Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago may be thrown out entirely in court, according to former FBI boss Kevin Brock.
News broke over Labor Day weekend that Trump had been granted a legal win when a federal judge ordered a special master to review the documents seized from Trump’s home.
Read MoreCommentary: Former Feds Give Justice Department a Bad Name
Andrew Weissmann is one weird dude, to say the least.
Weissmann, an author, law professor, and MSNBC legal analyst, is a prolific user of social media—but rather than post a head shot on his Twitter bio page, Weissmann has a photo of a dog staring down a doll resembling Donald Trump lying face-up on the floor. It’s unclear if the dog is supposed to represent Weissmann, described as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “pit bull” during the Russia election collusion investigation, or it’s just another indication of Weissmann’s insatiable obsession with the 45th president of the United States.
Read MoreFederal Judge Hands Trump Win, Orders Special Master to Review Evidence Seized from Mar-a-Lago
A federal judge on Monday handed Donald Trump a significant win, ordering a special master to review evidence seized by the FBI during its raid of the former president’s Florida estate last month.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon said the independent master can “review the seized property, manage assertions of privilege and make recommendations thereon, and evaluate claims for return of property.”
Read MoreTrump: FBI Did ‘Deep and Ugly Search’ of Teenage Son Barron’s Room
Former President Donald Trump said FBI agents searched the room of his 16-year-old son, Barron Trump, during their raid of Mar-a-Lago early last month.
Speaking at a rally Saturday in Pennsylvania, Trump said the United States is “like a third-world nation” after officials “trampled upon” his civil liberties throughout the raid.
“They even rifled through the first lady’s closet drawers and everything else, and even did a deep and ugly search of the room of my 16-year-old son, leaving everything they touched in far different condition than it was when they started,” Trump said.
Read MoreJudge Releases More Detailed List of Items Seized by FBI from Mar-a-Lago
A federal judge in Florida on Friday released a list of materials the FBI seized from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort that reportedly includes a mix of “top secret” documents, such personal items as photographs and other materials.
Read MoreNational Archives Lawyer Central to Mar-a-Lago Raid Documents Sued Reagan While at ACLU
The general counsel for the National Archives and Records Administration, who was central to coordinating between NARA and former President Donald Trump’s attorneys regarding the documents at Mar-a-Lago, previously sued then-President Ronald Reagan in 1989 while working at the American Civil Liberties Union.
Read MoreTrump Calls DOJ’s Heavily Redacted Affidavit for Mar-a-Lago Raid a ‘Total Public Relations Subterfuge’
The Justice Department ordered the FBI raid of former President Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Florida out of concern that “highly classified national security documents” stored in the estate’s basement could be disclosed and compromise “clandestine human sources” used in intelligence gathering, according to a heavily redacted version of the affidavit used to obtain the warrant.
Judge Bruce E. Reinhart on Thursday ordered that a redacted version of the affidavit be unsealed by noon today. The order came hours after the Justice Department submitted a proposal for extensive redactions to the document.
Read MoreDOJ Releases Affidavit Showing FBI Collected 184 Sensitive Documents at Mar-a-Lago Before Raid
The redacted affidavit released Friday by the Justice Department related to the recent FBI raid on former President Trump’s Florida estate shows the agency in part made their case by saying agents in May had already collected 184 sensitive documents from Mar-a-Lago.
Read More‘Unprecedented’: Judge Ruling Moves Trump Raid Affidavit One Step Closer to Release
Judge Bruce Reinhart on Monday released an order rejecting the Department of Justice’s argument that the affidavit used to justify a raid of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence should remain entirely sealed, moving the document one step closer to potentially being released.
The federal government now has until Thursday to propose redactions and make any other arguments as to why the document should not be made public.
Read MoreFBI Raid of Mar-a-Lago Was ‘Improper’: Dershowitz
Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz said that the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s Florida estate was incorrectly conducted.
Earlier in August, FBI agents with the Washington Field Office raided the former president’s Mar-a-Lago home seeking classified documents he may have removed from the White House. Reports subsequently emerged that Trump had already been served with a subpoena seeking classified records related to the investigation and had cooperated extensively with federal authorities.
Read MoreCommentary: What We Know about the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago Raid (So Far)
“There’s so much we don’t know!” says any liberal losing an argument about the dramatic FBI raid last week on Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Palm Beach residence and private club.
There are, indeed, some things that we do not know, but what we do know is already quite revealing. We know that the raid – which involved 30 FBI agents and three Justice Department lawyers – lasted over nine hours and was by day’s end reclassified as a “search” by all government agencies and the entire legacy media. We know that this supposed “search” was personally ordered not by FBI Director Christopher Wray, but by Attorney General Merrick Garland, a highly partisan Biden Administration appointee who has implied that parents objecting to critical race theory in public schools are domestic terrorists, and who refused to provide home security protection to Supreme Court justices in the majority of the recent ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Read MoreOld Case Over Audio Tapes in Bill Clinton’s Sock Drawer Could Impact Mar-a-Lago Search Dispute
When it comes to the National Archives, history has a funny way of repeating itself. And legal experts say a decade-old case over audio tapes that Bill Clinton once kept in his sock drawer may have significant impact over the FBI search of Melania Trump’s closet and Donald Trump’s personal office.
The case in question is titled Judicial Watch v. National Archives and Records Administration and it involved an effort by the conservative watchdog to compel the Archives to forcibly seize hours of audio recordings that Clinton made during his presidency with historian Taylor Branch.
Read MoreTrump Calls for Release of Full Affidavit Used for FBI’s Mar-a-Lago Raid
Former President Trump is calling for the full release of the affidavit submitted with the warrant allowing the FBI to raid his Mar-a-Lago estate – after the Justice Department asked the document to remain sealed.
“There is no way to justify the unannounced RAID of Mar-a-Lago, the home of the 45th President of the United States … by a very large number of gun toting FBI Agents, and the Department of ‘Justice’ but, in the interest of TRANSPARENCY, I call for the immediate release of the completely Unredacted Affidavit pertaining to this horrible and shocking BREAK-IN,” Trump wrote late Monday evening on his platform Truth Social.
Read MoreCommentary: The FBI Is Now the ‘Federal Bureau of Intimidation’
Nothing symbolizes the decline of the American republic better than the weaponization of justice that we saw last week when the FBI raided the home of former President Trump.
And nothing better represents the divide that now exists between Democrats and Republicans than the fact that some people still have faith in the FBI.
Aren’t they paying attention? Heck, that’s like a citizen of the old Soviet Union saying they had faith in the KGB – yeah, to crush dissent and lock up opponents of the regime in a Siberian gulag.
Read MoreTrump’s Lead Widens over DeSantis in 2024 Primary After FBI Raid: Poll
Former President Trump’s lead has grown by 12 points over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a hypothetical 2024 Republican presidential primary, according to a survey conducted after the FBI raided the Trump’s Florida residence.
If the primary were held today, 58% of registered voters, according to the Morning Consult/Politico survey published Friday.
Read MoreCommentary: It’s Time to Rediscover Our Roots as a Nation Founded as a Giant Middle Finger to Tyranny
Growing up in our house, Election Night was like the Super Bowl. We would stay up late into the night watching the returns. The 2020 election was no different. That night, I watched Donald Trump take state after state with ease. Then I watched as votes started to fluctuate, barely trickled in, and then, with only a handful of states to go, I watched as counting was halted altogether. A sinking feeling crept over me as I witnessed things I had never seen in my life.
Read MoreMSNBC Contributor, Ex-Spy Chief Hint Trump Deserves Execution over Classified Records Dispute
Amid published reports that former President Trump is improperly holding classified papers, including nuclear documents, at his Florida compound, MSNBC contributor Michael Beschloss and former CIA Director Michael Hayden are intimating via social media that Trump should be executed.
The Washington Post has reported that the FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound on Monday in order to retrieve “nuclear documents” they believed were improperly stored there.
Read MoreFBI Likely Briefed White House Before Mar-a-Lago Raid, Ex-FBI Agents Say
The top levels of the Biden administration, including the White House and officials leading the Department of Justice (DOJ), were likely aware of the Mar-a-Lago raid and may have even moved the warrant forward, two retired FBI agents told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Former President Donald Trump announced Monday night that the FBI raided his Florida home, while the Department of Justice (DOJ) had an ongoing investigation into the possible mishandling of classified documents after 15 boxes of White House documents ended up at Mar-a-Lago, according to The Washington Post.
Read MoreTrump Describes Process of How He Declassified Documents Found at Mar-a-Lago
Donald Trump’s office told Just the News on Friday that the classified materials the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate were declassified under a “standing order” while he was president that allowed him to take sensitive materials to the White House residence at night to keep working.
Read MoreAttorney General Garland Says He Personally Approved Trump Search, Will Release Warrant
Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday he personally approved the search of Donald Trump’s home this week and has filed a motion to unseal the warrant authorizing the raid of Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
Read MoreTrump Says His Mar a Lago Compound Has Been Raided by FBI: ‘Under Siege’
Former President Donald Trump on Monday evening issued a statement saying that FBI agents had raided his Florida estate in Mar a Lago, describing his home as being “under siege.”
“The are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” Trump said in a statement. “Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before.”
Read MoreTrump Headlines ‘Rigged’ Documentary’s Mar-a-Lago Premiere
President Donald J. Trump took center stage at Tuesday’s premiere of the Citizens United-produced film “Rigged: The Zuckerberg-Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump’ at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort here.
“Thank you very much, everyone. I appreciate it, and I really look forward. I saw the trailer, and it was really good. I said that: ‘David, this is very important because we have to have free and fair elections, and we have to have borders, or we don’t have a country.’”
Trump told the crowd, like them, he was eager to see the Citizens United documentary himself.
Read MoreTrump Cheers 2020 Election Doc ‘Rigged’ at Mar-a-Lago Premiere
President Donald J. Trump joined hundreds of MAGA luminaries, supporters of Citizens United and cast members of the documentary “Rigged,” which exposes how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent $400 million to rig the 2020 election against Trump, at its April 5, 2022 premiere.
Read MoreNeil W. McCabe Reports from Mar-A-Lago About the Premiere of New Film ‘Rigged’ Detailing Voter Fraud
WarRoom Battleground’s Stephen K. Bannon talks with Neil W. McCabe of The Star News Network live outside Mar-a-Lago before the premiere of The Rigged 2020 Election.
Read MoreBossie Releases ‘Zuckerbucks’ Film, as Over 40k Shown to Have Bypassed Wisconsin Voter ID Rules in 2020
With pro-Trump activist and political filmmaker David Bossie premiering a new documentary on Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago about the influence of “Zuckerbucks” in swaying the 2020 election in battleground states like Wisconsin, an election integrity watchdog group has documented that more than 40,000 absentee ballots in that state were cast in 2020 without providing ID by voters self-identifying as “indefinitely confined.”
In “Rigged: The Zuckerberg Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump,” Bossie, president of conservative nonprofit Citizens United, explores how Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg injected nearly $400 million into the 2020 presidential election through two left-leaning voter turnout nonprofits — the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) and the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR) — “with most of the funds funneled to government elections offices in critically important jurisdictions for Joe Biden — to finance get-out-the-vote efforts aimed at defeating” Trump, according press materials for the film.
Read MoreGOP Senate Campaign Committee Denies Recruiting Arizona Gov. Ducey for Mark Kelly Challenge
The communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee denied rumors to the Arizona Sun Times that the NRSC chairman, Sen. Richard L. “Rick” Scott (R.-Fla.), is recruiting Arizona Gov. Douglas A. “Doug” Ducey Jr., to run against Democrat Sen. Mark E. Kelly.
“I think your questions reflect a misunderstanding with what the NRSC does and what Chairman Scott does in terms of recruiting,” said Chris Hartline, who before becoming NRSC communications director, worked in a similar capacity on Scott’s Senate staff.
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