Mar a Lago raided by FBI

Swerd

Swerd

Audioholic Warlord
We need a tough federal judge to stare Trump down. Where's Judge John J. Sirica when we really need him?

Sirica was the federal judge who presided over the trial of the Watergate Burglars in 1973. He became famous because he jailed all the Break & Enter Team of Nixon's White House Plumbers. He believed they were all lying to him, as they en masse changed their innocent pleas to guilty. So, he jailed them until they provided information about who ordered them to break in, and who might be paying them to change their pleas from innocent to guilty.
 
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GO-NAD!

GO-NAD!

Audioholic Spartan
Trump can of course make numerous arguments (e.g. "I declassified the documents," executive privilege, etc.) that Martin could not. Also, the practical implications of trying Trump in a federal court will undoubtedly play some role in the DOJ's decision. If the DOJ indicts him while he's a candidate the trial will inevitably turn into a three ring circus due to Trump's antics (I wish these types of things played no role, but I see little point in pretending it won't).

As I see it, the main take away from the Martin case is that one can be sentenced to a significant prison term for willful retention of national defense information, even if the DOJ doesn't prove that the defendant sold the information or gave it away. On the other hand, my initial impression is that the Martin case is probably an outlier and I highly doubt Trump would be sentenced to anywhere near 9 years.

I also doubt that Trump will actually go to trial, but anything is possible right now. Trump is such a bizarre human being it's hard to know if he'd choose a trial.

And, of course, he hasn't even been indicted so this is all speculative.
Does he even have 9 years left in him?
 
Trell

Trell

Audioholic Spartan
No, but he’s banking on 6! :rolleyes:
The looser has announced his candidacy for the 2024 election of US president two years before the election. Another first by that looser along with the first one to have three ongoing grand juries targetting him.
 
GO-NAD!

GO-NAD!

Audioholic Spartan
The looser has announced his candidacy for the 2024 election of US president two years before the election. Another first by that looser along with the first one to have three ongoing grand juries targetting him.
I wonder how many needles De Santis has jabbed into his TFG voodoo doll yet...
 
M

Mr._Clark

Audioholic Samurai
Does he even have 9 years left in him?
Good question. Back in 2013 The Onion suggested he had 15-20 years.

>>>My friends, everybody has their down days, and during these long winter months it is especially easy to succumb to the doldrums and find yourself in a bit of a funk. But not to fear! I have a simple tip that’s guaranteed to pick you up and get you back in good spirits in no time, and here it is: Whenever you’re feeling low, just remember that I, Donald Trump, will be dead in roughly 15 to 20 years.<<<

 
Mikado463

Mikado463

Audioholic Spartan
Good question. Back in 2013 The Onion suggested he had 15-20 years.

>>>My friends, everybody has their down days, and during these long winter months it is especially easy to succumb to the doldrums and find yourself in a bit of a funk. But not to fear! I have a simple tip that’s guaranteed to pick you up and get you back in good spirits in no time, and here it is: Whenever you’re feeling low, just remember that I, Donald Trump, will be dead in roughly 15 to 20 years.<<<

talk about a cause for celebration ! :cool:
 
M

Mr._Clark

Audioholic Samurai
We need a tough federal judge to stare Trump down. Where's Judge John J. Sirica when we really need him?

Sirica was the federal judge who presided over the trial of the Watergate Burglars in 1973. He became famous because he jailed all the Break & Enter Team of Nixon's White House Plumbers. He believed they were all lying to him, as they en masse changed their innocent pleas to guilty. So, he jailed them until they provided information about who ordered them to break in, and who might be paying them to change their pleas from innocent to guilty.
How about the judge who handed down this sentence?

>>>Turkish televangelist Adnan Oktar sentenced to almost 8,500 years for spying and sex offences <<<


So, how's that "new trial" thingy working out for you there, Adnan?
 
M

Mr._Clark

Audioholic Samurai
It looks like one of the snakes narrowly averted a train wreck by settling a civil lawsuit just before trial. Habba says a lot of really dumb things, but settling this was undoubtedly a good choice. There's a good chance Trump would have been burned to a financial crisp if this went to a jury.
It looks like at least one of the snakes, er, lawyers was grilled up nice and crispy by the judges on the 11th Circuit today.

>>>At a 40-minute hearing searing in Atlanta, the three-member panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit seemed to embrace the Justice Department’s position that a federal judge had acted improperly two months ago when she ordered an independent arbiter to review the documents taken from Mr. Trump’s Florida compound, Mar-a- Lago. . . .

One of the appellate judges, Andrew L. Brasher, pressed James Trusty, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, to cite “a single decision by a federal court other than this one” that had issued a ruling in a similar case.

Mr. Trusty tried to sidestep that question, suggesting that the Trump legal team may still offer claims that the search was unlawful and noted that a “raid” of a former president’s home was itself unprecedented. But Britt Grant, another Trump-appointed judge on the panel, interrupted Mr. Trusty and objected to his use of the word “raid” to describe the court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago. . .

None of the judges asked any skeptical questions of the Justice Department. <<<


"I hear the train a comin'
It's rolling round the bend . . ."
 
M

Mr._Clark

Audioholic Samurai
Several news outlets with headlines about Trump's lawyers getting grilled.


Here's a blog article describing it as a brutal beatdown in which Trump's lawyer was "ritually pantsed."

>>>Donald Trump had a very bad day yesterday in a whole bunch of courts . . . But nowhere was the beatdown more brutal than at the Eleventh Circuit, where Trump’s lawyer Jim Trusty got ritually pantsed in his effort to defend US District Judge Aileen Cannon’s claim of equitable jurisdiction over the warrant to search Mar-a-Lago and seize government documents stored there.<<<

 
M

Mr._Clark

Audioholic Samurai
There seems to be an informal consensus in the legal community that Trump will be indicted in connection with his Mar-a-Lago activities.

If there is a trial, it will be interesting to see if he's indicted in DC, and if the trial actually occurs there.

>>>Where Would The Trial Be Held?

Although Trump has tried to keep this case in the Southern District of Florida (where Republicans recently routed Democrats in statewide elections), I expect that the indictment would be issued from the District Court for the District of Columbia. The crimes related to the removal and retention of national security documents in violation of the Espionage Act were arguably committed when Trump removed them from the White House, making D.C. a possible venue for an indictment on those charges.

Trump would almost certainly fear a trial in front of a Washington, D.C., jury even more than he would fear a trial in front of a South Florida jury. Trump received only 5 percent of the vote in the District in 2020, by far his lowest total anywhere. By contrast, he won Florida in 2020.<<<


The gist of the following article from earlier this year is that if Trump is indicted in DC, but only for the three crimes listed in the affidavit/search warrant, the trial would most certainly occur in DC, but if the DOJ also indicts (in DC) on obstruction of justice it might result in the trial being moved to Florida.

>>>As to where to indict, put simply, what started in Washington should stay in Washington. To lay and even some legal observers, it may seem counterintuitive to try a case outside of Florida, where the court-approved search of Mar-a-Lago transpired and where Trump had improperly stashed documents containing some of the country’s most sensitive national security secrets. However, while the case could be indicted in Florida, that option is a non-starter for any responsible federal prosecutor, for reasons we discuss in a moment. . . .

To be sure, some within DOJ will note that indicting Trump for obstruction could add to the low but non-zero risk that a case indicted in DC would be transferred to Florida, a move that could jeopardize the prospects for conviction. Trump’s lawyers will at the very least file a motion to move the case there and to join all the offenses into a single trial in Florida.

They may do that in part because of the added burden it would place on the government. But their main motivation would be their hope that, in Trump’s backyard, where some people seem to think he “can do no wrong,” at least one or two members of Trump’s base would find their way into the jury box. There, they might ignore the law and nullify other jurors’ votes to convict, however powerful the evidence of guilt and the interests of justice. . . .

To be sure, even the small residual risk of having a trial on an obstruction count transferred to Florida could be eliminated altogether by simply not including obstruction as a formal count and alleging the obstructive conduct within the other charges. That approach would allow prosecutors to introduce at trial the evidence of Trump’s and his team’s obstructive acts to help prove the requisite criminal intent: willful removal and retention of government records; the refusal to return defense related information; and the knowing conversion of government documents (and perhaps also disobeying a grand jury subpoena).<<<


Only time will tell, of course.
 
Mikado463

Mikado463

Audioholic Spartan
After his recent 'Thanksgiving dinner' nothing could be better than that 'Turkey' to be served on a platter in DC !!
 
M

Mr._Clark

Audioholic Samurai
The 11th Circuit shut down the special master review process. I haven't read the opinion yet, but it was clearly not sympathetic to judge Cannon.

>>>In a strongly worded ruling, the three-member panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit shut down an independent review of thousands of documents seized this summer from Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida. That move allowed the government to pursue its inquiry into whether Mr. Trump illegally kept national security records at his Mar-a-Lago home and obstructed the government’s repeated efforts to retrieve them.

The unanimous but unsigned 21-page ruling was sharply critical of Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s decision in September to intervene in the case, saying she never had jurisdiction to do so.

“The law is clear,” the appeals court wrote. “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so. Either approach would be a radical reordering of our case law limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations. And both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.” <<<

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/01/us/politics/trump-special-master.html
 
ryanosaur

ryanosaur

Audioholic Overlord
It would appear that the 3 GOP appointed judges of the 11th Circuit have just issued a scathing "Punch to the Baby-Maker" of Judge Cannon and Team-Orange, ordering the end to the Special Master and requesting Cannon dismiss the case entirely in seven days (if a stay from further appeal is not otherwise issued).
This random news article from the list of many seems to work just fine:
 
ryanosaur

ryanosaur

Audioholic Overlord
The 11th Circuit shut down the special master review process. I haven't read the opinion yet, but it was clearly not sympathetic to judge Cannon.

>>>In a strongly worded ruling, the three-member panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit shut down an independent review of thousands of documents seized this summer from Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida. That move allowed the government to pursue its inquiry into whether Mr. Trump illegally kept national security records at his Mar-a-Lago home and obstructed the government’s repeated efforts to retrieve them.

The unanimous but unsigned 21-page ruling was sharply critical of Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s decision in September to intervene in the case, saying she never had jurisdiction to do so.

“The law is clear,” the appeals court wrote. “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so. Either approach would be a radical reordering of our case law limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations. And both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.” <<<

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/01/us/politics/trump-special-master.html
Jinx. :)
 
M

Mr._Clark

Audioholic Samurai
The 11th Circuit shut down the special master review process. I haven't read the opinion yet, but it was clearly not sympathetic to judge Cannon.

>>>In a strongly worded ruling, the three-member panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit shut down an independent review of thousands of documents seized this summer from Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida. That move allowed the government to pursue its inquiry into whether Mr. Trump illegally kept national security records at his Mar-a-Lago home and obstructed the government’s repeated efforts to retrieve them.

The unanimous but unsigned 21-page ruling was sharply critical of Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s decision in September to intervene in the case, saying she never had jurisdiction to do so.

“The law is clear,” the appeals court wrote. “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so. Either approach would be a radical reordering of our case law limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations. And both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.” <<<

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/01/us/politics/trump-special-master.html
The opening of paragraph of the court opinion doesn't leave much doubt where the rest of the opinion is going:

>>This appeal requires us to consider whether the district court had jurisdiction to block the United States from using lawfully seized records in a criminal investigation. The answer is no.<<<
 
M

Mr._Clark

Audioholic Samurai
In short, the appeals court tossed the case on the basis that the district court did not have jurisdiction. This means the district court has no power to decide anything (although judge Cannon might just be wacky enough to try).

This is a relatively minor issue, but the briefs by Trump's lawyers consistently referred to him as "President Trump." This struck me as an extremely weak attempt to entice the court into giving him special treatment. The second paragraph of the 11th Circuit opinion begins "Former President Donald J. Trump . . ." and simply refers to him as "plaintiff" after that.

In taking the case, the district court relied on equitable jurisdiction. Defining equitable jurisdiction is somewhat difficult, but here's one definition "Equitable jurisdiction is a system of justice designed to supplement the common law by taking action in a reasonable and fair manner which results in just outcome."


Historically (many years ago in England) courts of equity were separate from courts of law, and the courts of equity only stepped in if a court of law ruled in a manner that blatantly unfair or unjust, even if the ruling was technically consistent with the law. Although the law has evolved over the years, this is still the basic principle that underlies all equitable powers of a court.

Reading between the lines, the 11th Circuit was disgusted with the notion that "equity" was being invoked to grant legal superpowers that are not available to any other private citizen merely because he's a former president.

Presumably, Trump's lawyers will file an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in a final act of desperation.

This is starting to remind me of the "Thank you sir, may I have another?" scene from Animal House:

 
Trell

Trell

Audioholic Spartan
More classified documents found in other Trump properties. Who would have guessed that?

>>>Lawyers for former president Donald Trump found at least two items marked classified after an outside team hired by Trump searched a storage unit in West Palm Beach, Fla., used by the former president, according to people familiar with the matter.

The ultimate significance of the classified material in the storage unit is not immediately clear, but its presence there indicates Mar-a-Lago was not the only place where Trump kept classified material. It also provides further evidence that Trump and his team did not fully comply with a May grand jury subpoena that sought all documents marked classified still in possession of the post-presidential office.
<<<


 
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