The federal magistrate who greenlit the raid of a former president’s home gave the FBI until Friday to release a redacted version of the document supporting the historic raid. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was raided by 30 armed FBI agents on Aug. 8, 2022. And ever since, everyone has wondered why.
On Monday, Judge Bruce Reinhart officially ordered the FBI to get him their suggested redactions to the documents by noon Thursday, saying he was inclined to release them. The federal lawyers turned in their suggested versions of the affidavit supporting the search warrant Thursday morning, and Reinhart accepted the FBI’s changed version of the affidavit.
Trump thundered on his TruthSocial account on Thursday that “The Radical Left Democrat prosecutors are illegally trying to circumvent, for purely political gain, the Presidential Record’s Act, under which I have done absolutely nothing wrong.” He said the PRA “can not be circumvented, for me or any other President. They illegally Raided my home, and took things that should not have been taken. They even broke into my safe, an unthinkable act!”
As I pointed out previously at PJ Media, the FBI wanted redactions because of the sensitive nature of the information.
Reinhart wrote that he “must still consider whether there is a less onerous alternative to sealing the entire document.” Oh, okay. But “the Government argues that redacting the Affidavit and unsealing it in part is not a viable option because the necessary redactions ‘would be so extensive as to render the document devoid of content that would meaningfully enhance the public’s understanding of these events beyond the information already now in the public record.’”
Trust us: for half the country, raiding a former president’s home for the first time in the history of our country, after all we’ve been through, is not devoid of context, nor are we ignorant of “understanding of these events beyond the information already now in the public record.” We’ve seen this act before in the Russiagate and Alfa Bank fake scandals. Also, it’s hard to believe a sentient judge who’s watched the FBI circus over the past six years doesn’t know the FBI leaked fake news to the media about all of the above and then about Trump having nuclear secrets, which was likely recycled into a fearsome and fantastical tale in the warrant affidavit. Just like Russia Collusion.
So while sources, methods, and witness information would be possibly blotted out like grandma’s cards at Wednesday night’s bingo game, there might be enough details in what remains to hint at why the FBI might potentially break the law to get inside Trump’s home. Or maybe not.
#TrumpWarrant affidavit released! Sneak peek! Unredacted & redacted versions. pic.twitter.com/EFE4dOyp7p
— Robert Barnes (@barnes_law) August 18, 2022
The whole imbroglio over the presidential documents is not worthy of an FBI raid, which is why many believe it’s a planned distraction in the run-up to the midterm elections.
As PJ Media reported, two well-respected lawyers who specialize in constitutional rights say the search warrant alone confirmed that “the FBI had no legally valid cause for the raid.” Zero. They’re joined by legal scholar Alan Dershowitz and former chief counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee and former Supreme Court clerk Mike Davis.
The FBI said Trump violated three federal statutes, but David Rivkin and Lee A. Casey, writing in the Wall Street Journal, said those excuses are bogus. “Mr. Trump’s documents are covered by a specific statute, the Presidential Records Act of 1978 [PRA],” say the authors. Furthermore, “the Supreme Court position, as stated in Morton v. Mancari (1974), [says] that “where there is no clear intention otherwise, a specific statute will not be controlled or nullified by a general one, regardless of the priority of enactment.” In other words, “the former president’s rights under the PRA trump any application of the laws the FBI warrant cites.”
And the same magistrate judge who signed off on that search warrant knew it too. So is Judge Bruce Reinhart inclined to release the documents that show he was a stooge or a fool to go along with the FBI raid?
We’ll find out Friday. And while you’re waiting to find out what the FBI accused Trump of doing, Joe Biden just offered up another government program — this one to student loan borrowers — on top of the other billions he’s spending to “reduce” inflation. These should buy a few votes for him in the November midterm elections.
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