Trump staff tell FBI "Trump was a pack rat who had been personally overseeing his collection of White House records since even before leaving Washington and had been reluctant to return anything."
Former Trump WH lawyer Herschmann warned Trump late 2021 he "could face legal liability if he did not return government materials he had taken with him when he left office"..."particularly any classified material."
In returning some documents to National Archives in January 2022, "Trump had overseen the packing process himself with great secrecy, declining to show some items even to top aides."
Trump's attorney told DOJ "Trump had authorized him" to allow DOJ to see storage room (after DOJ asked) "but they were explicitly prohibited from opening any of the approximately fifty to fifty-five boxes that they observed."
via DOJ filing
8. Exhibit seven
Trump's cooperating with Archives, FBI broke down after Tom Fitton began advising he was wrong to return documents in January and should not give up any additional records.
Trump's self-incriminating admissions on Truth Social
Several of them.👇
10. Exhibit nine
"What we are talking about here, in the main, are Presidential records in the hands of the 45th President."
via Trump attorney Christopher Kise*
*Yes, those are the words of Trump's own lawyer before a federal court.
11. Exhibit ten
Enormous quantity, explosive content (e.g., intel on foreign country's military nuclear program), location of documents with classified markings (including intermingled with personal belongings).
National Archives, Department of Justice Chief of Counterintelligence, and Congress repeatedly place Trump on notice of illegality in retaining the documents.
With terrific team, I just published large study looking at all court cases involving the Trump administration.
Shows basis for courts no longer giving a so-called "presumption of regularity" (a legal doctrine involving a strong benefit of the doubt) to the administration.
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1/ I worked at DoD. I literally cannot imagine lawyers coming up with a legal basis for lethal strike of suspected Venezuelan drug boat.
Hard to see how this would not be "murder" or war crime under international law that DoD considers applicable.
Read this expert analysis⤵️
2/ The author of the expert analysis worked at the State Department under several administrations with these types of use of force issues as his portfolio.
Former top official of the National Guard Major Gen. Randy E. Manner
Listen to this excerpt of it.
- Our Guard is not trained for this
- "Negatively impacts military readiness"
- Being as "political props"
2 "This is ... changing the entire context of the way that the average citizens in these cities are going to start viewing ... our military...
We should not have military on our streets, in our American cities. It is absolutely the way that dictatorships run, not democracies."
3
Q: "Joint Task Force ... said that all service members deployed will get an initial briefing on the mission and operational environment, and that prepares them. Is that enough?
General Manner: "No, absolutely not. ... This is a very potentially dangerous situation."
"Epstein was actually still on the Mar-a-Lago membership logs up to 2007. ... That of course is a year after Jeffrey Epstein's arrest in Florida."
So Trump didn't kick him out for many years after knowing Epstein 'stole' Virginia Giuffre from MAL in 2000.
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2/ Here's the Miami Herald piece that @barryscoopking referenced:
"A footnote in the book says the authors were shown the club’s registry from more than a decade earlier and that Epstein in fact had been a member until October 2007."
@barryscoopking @KevinGHall 3/ Here's from the book by then-Miami Herald journalists @Blaskey_S, @NickNehamas and @jayhweaver and Wall Street Journal's @ceostroff.
2/ Along with the Heat Map is essential analysis by leading expert @thomasjoscelyn.
He explains how the Proud Boys orchestrated January 6th attack and risks of resurgence – especially in the event of pardons that former President Trump has suggested.