The Trump Warrant Had No Legal Basis

The Trump Warrant Had No Legal Basis - WSJ

The legal analysis by David Rivkin and Lee Casey,

So the search warrant was bad from the beginning, having no legal basis. The judge clearly overstepped legal boundaries when issuing the warrant as a result. Hence, the FBI was not legally justified to raid and search the Trump home. A low level legal judge, a magistrate, issued the warrant, so there is little wonder as to why he was ignorant of federal law.

The information cited by Rivkin and Casey prove federal law gave the former president a right of access to all records acquired from his first and through his last day in office.. His possession of them is entirely consistent with that right, and therefore lawful, regardless of the statutes the FBI cites in its warrant.

I leave you with this last quote from the article....
"Wonder Land: The first Trump presidency began with the Russian collusion narrative. Now we have its offspring—the classified-documents narrative, which like its predecessor, is heavy on insinuation and light on facts".

About the authors of the O/P source:
Messrs. Rivkin and Casey practice appellate and constitutional law in Washington. They served at the Justice Department and the White House Counsel’s Office in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.

 

Your wishful thinking is comical. Your argument is not persuasive.

 

Just another example of illegal behavior engaged in by the agencies of the federal government in pursuit of the democratic party agenda. The founders of the nation anticipated these and hence built a framework democrats have tried desperately to destroy ever since.

As if we needed any more evidence of this type of bad behavior. Democrats will cry that they are "defending democracy.... as if that's an actual think they believe in. It isn't, to be sure, but that is their marketing plan...

 

Why? Lay out your argument that counters the two legal scholars/authors, both whose reputations precede them both. Good luck!

 

Lefty posters be like.. "but feelz, yo"...

 

Many will completely dismiss the meat of the OP-Ed and the Federal law that gives the former president total right of access to all records acquired during his administration. Why? Because the echo chamber tells them so....

 

What I have bolded reveals a shocking misunderstanding of how federal courts work.
A federal magistrate judge is not like a JP. They are fully qualified attorneys, highly distinguished in their fields.

The attempted legal argument is hilariously incorrect.

 

ACCESS. Not POSSESSION. I have ACCESS to my local art museum. That doesn't mean I have permission to POSSESS the items in its collection.

 

I think democrats, these days are so enslaved by their own dogma that all they really care about is distracting folks from what they are actually doing to destroy our nation. So, Trump. It's magical for them. It's hard to understand why so many of them are so angry at the nation that allows them to continue to act like this... I've always maintained that an international flight to anyplace run by folks like them should immediately dissuade them from their path... but alas...

 

And this one, in particular, liked to hang with Jeffrey Epstein. Coincidence???

 

It appears you both reject the authors' argument. In doing so, you both fail to understand the PRA, and its legislative intention was to provide a greater legal access to ex-presidents.

You're welcome. Glad I could help clarify for you both the meat of their legal argument as opposed to yours.

 

NARA, based on the PRA, disagrees with you. The docs belong in their custody.

 

These exact two have been lick spittling Trump since Trump refused to use a blind trust in 2017. They are just scratching to give the extreme RW talking points at the detriment of the rule of law and the Constitution. Like with everything their have their partisan opinions to flog. Good luck, Trump's DIRECTLY in deep on this one.

 

That's not how that worked, but hey whatever sweet nothings you need to tell yourself to cope.

 

The records are the property of the archives. You do not negotiate with a person the return of their property. You're welcome.

 

You fell for that fake image? Ah, maybe you were thinking of Trump. Trump liked to (actually) hang with Epstein.

 

Haven't we all figured out yet that Epstein was an equal opportunity slime, who 'hung out' or had contact with literally every human being who has ever spoken English, had money and either economic or political clout from the the mid seventies at Bear Stearns, through his day of incarceration? My God ,its that 7 degrees rule only its applied to a pedo instead of Hitler or Lincoln! Its getting ridiculous. If you stood next to the guy on the way to buy some beer and chips 1982 at a local store, you are guilty of aiding and abetting criminal conduct two decades later.

 

More simply, not "fell" but desperate...

 

Happy reading... Enjoy. From Jackson's first sentence and until the end of her quoted legal decision, it proves you both wrong.

“Under the statutory scheme established by the PRA, the decision to segregate personal materials from Presidential records is made by the President, during the President’s term and in his sole discretion,” Jackson wrote in her March 2012 decision, which was never appealed.

“Since the President is completely entrusted with the management and even the disposal of Presidential records during his time in office, it would be difficult for this Court to conclude that Congress intended that he would have less authority to do what he pleases with what he considers to be his personal records,” she added.

"The judge also noted it would be wrong to seize the tapes from Clinton, that it was an “extraordinary request” that was “unfounded, contrary to the PRA’s express terms, and contrary to traditional principles of administrative law. The Court agrees.”
If the Archives wants to challenge a decision, that agency and the attorney general can initiate an enforcement mechanism under the law, but it is a civil procedure and has no criminal penalty, she noted.

"Jackson also concluded that a decision to challenge a president's decision lies solely with the National Archives and can't be reviewed by a court. If the Archives wants to challenge a decision, that agency and the attorney general can initiate an enforcement mechanism under the law, but it is a civil procedure and has no criminal penalty, she noted." Here the important sentence is: "it is a civil procedure and has no criminal penalty."


FBI Broke the Law When It Stole President Trump’s Documents at Mar-a-Lago – ConservativeModern.com

 

I concur with all of this, but there is an additional more mundane but significant reason for the warrant's impropriety. Judges very seldom give a warrant to search for something that is readily available. Trump personally invited the FBI (who were visiting Mar a Lago to inspect the handling of the documents) to call and come down anytime they needed something or wanted to look at something; this was two months before the raid. My bet is that little factoid was not in the affidavit.

 

How can anyone conclude that the warrant had no legal basis, without access to the underlying legal justification.

The only people who have seen the legal basis, determined that it was justified.

People talking out their ass are no more credible than any of us just posting stuff online.

 

From the OP
"Was the Federal Bureau of Investigation justified in searching Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago? The judge who issued the warrant for Mar-a-Lago has signaled that he is likely to release a redacted version of the affidavit supporting it. But the warrant itself suggests the answer is likely no—the FBI had no legally valid cause for the raid"

"Likely" no...in other words the authors of the piece in the OP aren't actually sure. So it's their OPINION.

 

I'm betting you are on the money because as the article states, the FBI was quite okay with Trump putting an additional lock on the room that held the records when they visited in June. He cooperated with their request. If he didn't cooperate, they could have obtained a less intrusive legal remedy, (a restraining order allowing the papers to be transferred to a more proper storage location) than going out with a full on raid with a search warrant.

This could have also allowed the former president continued access. I have to think and like the article's authors concluded,
"Surely that’s what the government would have done if any other former president were involved." Oh but Trump...

 

They didn't just pull their OPINION out of thin air or from their nether regions. Read the article. It's based on legal precedents.

 

And yet..."likely" no