Tag Archives: FBI

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Is she a ‘Trump judge’?

Donald J. Trump’s past blathering about “Obama judges” and “Clinton judges” ruling against him in various legal battles gives me pause as I try to weigh the legal significance of a federal judge who has ruled in the ex-president’s favor in his fight with the FBI over those classified documents he squirreled away at his Florida estate.

Legal and constitutional scholars have been quick to condemn Trump’s assertion that those decisions with which he disagrees are the result of the political leanings of the judges who delivered them. They have said that judges take solemn oaths to be faithful to the Constitution and that’s what they have done in issuing their rulings.

Now we have a Trump-appointed federal judge — Aileen Cannon — deciding that it’s OK to appoint a special master to pore through the documents seized by the FBI in its search for possible criminal evidence.

The Justice Department argued against the appointment of such a special master. It well could appeal the decision by Judge Cannon.

But I am left to ponder something. If the ex-POTUS is going to rant and rail against judges who happen to occupy their seat on the bench because they are appointed by political rivals of his, is it OK for others to do the same thing when a Trump-appointed judge issues a key ruling in the former president’s favor?

Just askin’, man.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news, national news

Trump gets special master … what’s next?

Do not look for me or listen for my voice among those who might be inclined to complain about a federal judge’s decision to grant Donald Trump’s request for a special master to investigate the FBI seizure of records from Trump’s posh Florida estate.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is a Trump appointee and today she ruled that a special master can be selected to examine claims of lawyer-client privilege as Trump seeks to block the probe into why he took classified documents from the White House to his glitzy estate in south Florida.

I am going to presume that Cannon is following the law as she sees fit. She ruled that the investigation by Congress and the Justice Department will continue and that she doesn’t see any overly long delay coming up as the courts look for a special master.

I do have one worry, which is that Cannon might bend to the idiocy being pitched that Trump is entitled to “executive privilege,” even though many other judges have ruled that as a former POTUS … he does not! Trump is declaring that he does enjoy that privilege, despite the fact that he left office in January 2021 and that, as one judge noted in an earlier ruling that “we only have one president at a time.” Trump ain’t it.

But, as The Hill reported: Prosecutors also said Trump could not claim executive privilege as a former president against the current executive branch, but Cannon said the DOJ’s position “arguably overstates the law.”

Judge grants Trump’s request to appoint special master to review Mar-a-Lago documents | The Hill

I am going to offer a word of hope that we can get this special master issue settled, get someone appointed, have that individual make rulings in a timely manner and that we can get to the bottom of the “probable cause” for criminality that resulted in the FBI search classified documents.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, to my way of thinking, has the goods to indict Trump on several counts. The question now becomes, will he get the chance to exercise his own constitutional authority?

The special master ploy mustn’t get in the AG’s way.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, FBI, legal news, national news, political news

FBI acted properly

I am going to seek to put to rest a lie that Donald J. Trump keeps repeating as it involves the FBI search for classified/top secret documents that the ex-president squirreled away illegally in his Florida home.

All set? Here goes.

Trump keeps saying that the FBI “raided” his home. It was no “raid.” The FBI worked with a federal judge to obtain a search warrant based on what it believes is “probable cause” that a crime took place. The feds sought the documents that Trump spirited out of the White House in violation of the Presidential Records Act that stipulates that official documents need to go to the National Archives.

When the FBI found the documents, the agents — in full view of Trump’s lawyers — spread them on the floor for picture-taking purposes. The ex-POTUS’s newest lie is that the feds spread the documents out to illustrate that Trump was so damn careless he would just toss ’em on the floor for the whole world to see.

No! The FBI was following standard operating evidence-gathering procedure. Trump never says the FBI picked the documents up and put them where agents found them: in the boxes that Trump’s team took from the White House to Florida.

As is always the case with this clown, the crowd that hears these lies cheers on the liar who spreads them, filling him with even more hubris to repeat them.

Disgraceful.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, national news

Defund the FBI?

The right-wing extremists — the QAnon adherents and election deniers — need to be committed, sent to the nut house and left to fester in the dark.

These are the cretins who are calling for Congress to “defund the FBI” in the wake of the agency’s search of Donald Trump’s home in Florida for classified documents that Trump took from the White House when he left office in January 2021.

This is simply an astonishing thing to hear from those who proclaim to be “patriots” who believe in “law and order” and who declare that they are friends and allies of those who enforce our laws.

My … goodness.

Patriotic Americans wouldn’t vilify government agents who were acting on lawful orders. Nor would they attack law enforcement officers — such as what occurred on 1/6. Moreover, no friend or ally of police would ever present physical threats of harm to those who occupy the thin blue line that protects American society.

One Republican congressional candidate has actually said that Attorney General Merrick Garland should be executed. Can you believe that? Oh, sure you can! Why? Because it’s becoming part of the GOP mantra.

It’s disgraceful.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news, national news

So many options for AG and others to ponder

As I sit here in the peanut gallery far from Ground Zero in the Donald Trump investigation hotbed, I find myself thinking about the options that await the former president of the United States.

Only one of them looks good and at this moment it appears to be the farthest from taking shape.

Attorney General Merrick Garland is among those who are trying to determine whether to indict the ex-president on criminal charges. We also have the Fulton County (Ga.) district attorney looking into allegations of vote tampering and the New York state AG examining whether Trump’s business committed crimes. Oh, and then we have the House of Reps’ select committee examining whether Trump broke the law by inciting the mob of traitors to storm the Capitol on 1/6 and seek to stop the certification of the 2020 election … that Trump lost to Joseph R. Biden Jr.

There’s nothing cast in stone that says Garland must indict Trump on anything, let alone on the most serious charges he might be considering. The AG could determine there isn’t enough to send Trump to prison for the rest of his life, so he might decide to pursue lesser charges.

Then the DA in Fulton County, Fani Willis, also might determine that Trump didn’t really seek to interfere with the election by demanding that the state “find” enough votes to put him over the top.

New York AG Letitia James also could find that she doesn’t have the goods on Trump’s business, even though his chief financial officer has pleaded guilty to tax fraud and is awaiting a sentence.

And what about the House panel? The committee has compiled a mountain of evidence that suggests everything from inciting insurrection and dereliction of duty on 1/6. The testimony we have heard has been stunning in the extreme!

But you see, Trump is facing a mounting array of legal challenges … even as he supposedly ponders whether to run for the presidency yet again in 2024. My strong sense is that one of those challenges is going to fall hard on The Donald.

The least likely option would be for none of these probes to produce a formal criminal charge against the former president. I understand fully the gravity of taking such a step. I also grasp the blowback that would occur from the cultists out there who continue to excuse the ex-POTUS’s conduct at all levels in the period after the 2020 election.

It just occurs to me that the very last person on this Earth I would want to be is Donald John Trump.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news, national news

‘Law and order’ gives way to chaos

A truly astonishing metamorphosis is occurring within what we used to call a great American political party.

The Republican Party used to believe in law and order, in the sanctity of the badge that men and women wore while enforcing the law, in their belief that a strong police force was the best deterrent against runaway crime and chaos.

What’s happened to the GOP?

The FBI secured a legally acquired search warrant to allow agents into the home of a former Republican president of the U.S.A. and suddenly the FBI has become the enemy.

Now we find political progressives — whom conservatives once denigrated as being “soft on crime” — rushing to defend the FBI against the attacks coming … from the right!

The metamorphosis is unbecoming in the extreme. For instance, it features physical threats against FBI agents, with threats of “civil war” coming from the very individuals who in another era would never utter such nonsense out loud.

The world has gone nuts!

It seems the change is the direct result of the cult that has formed around a former president of the United States. The cult places idolatry of the former POTUS ahead of all else, even time-tested policies and philosophies that once formed the basis of the once-great political party.

For as long as the cult dictates how Americans shall behave, there will be no making sense of what is occurring. It does require those of us who oppose the cult to remain vigilant and alert to the dangers the cult followers present.

Indeed, any “talk” of civil war must not devolve into the real thing. We did that once in this country. It nearly destroyed us.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news

Keep it secret, feds

Now comes word that Donald J. Trump and his dwindling ranks of allies want the federal government to unseal the affidavit that prompted the judge to approve a request by the FBI to search Trump’s south Florida home for criminal evidence.

I’ll join those who suggest that releasing that document would be a mistake, that it could compromise the probe and that Attorney General Merrick Garland acted in good faith when he sought permission to send in the agents.

The FBI has collected a substantial amount of paperwork that Trump took from the White House when he left office in January 2021. Some of it appears to be, um, highly classified. That’s a no-no. There could be violations of the Espionage Act and the Presidential Records Act that the Justice Department will consider as it ponders whether to indict the former POTUS.

The affidavit, though, is another matter. I am all in favor of transparency. However, if it compromises a criminal investigation, then there ought to be limits on how much we see.

As I have noted before, I trust the AG implicitly to be a man of high honor and integrity. He said he will “follow the law” wherever it leads. I believe he is doing that. He also is arguing that the affidavit need not be revealed for all the world to see.

Let the man and our Justice Department do their job.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, national news

FBI is now the enemy?

Never did I imagine — not one time in all my years on this good Earth — that we would see the Federal Bureau of Investigation become the target of hate among Americans.

What’s more, the FBI has become the target of a political demographic with a long and eloquent history supporting the agency’s effort to fight organized and other sorts of crime.

We now hear — and this is weird beyond belief — that we need to “de-fund the FBI.” Who’s making that absurd demand? Right-wingers who were so quick to chastise lefties for calling for de-funding the police in the wake of a string of police-involved shootings of Black men and women.

What in the world is happening to us?

The FBI now is a right-wing target because agents obtained a search warrant that enabled them to search the home of a former president of the United States because they had “probable cause” to believe the ex-POTUS had taken highly sensitive material with him from the White House to his home in South Florida.

Earth to right-wingers: That is against the law!

Don’t right wingers believe in the rule of law? That no one is above the law? Didn’t the attorney general, Merrick Garland, pledge to pursue anyone who has broken the law “without fear or favor”?

I must re-state what is obvious to me.

AG Garland followed the letter of the law in seeking a warrant from a federal judicial magistrate.  Federal law does not set a terribly high bar; it asks only that prosecutors can prove “probable cause” that a crime has been committed. The feds made the case to the judge, who then issued the warrant.

Moreover, Donald Trump’s legal team met the agents as they commenced their search. There was no “surprise,” no “siege” at Mar-a-Lago. It was done by the book.

For that the right-wingers want to “de-fund the FBI”?

I have said before that politics at times gets turned upside down and, for good measure, inside out. This is one of those times.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news

Garland’s stock keeps rising

Merrick Garland’s stock keeps appreciating, in my humble view, as he weathers the storm of criticism being heaped on him by the far-right wing of the political horde that awaits some finality in what the U.S. attorney general determines regarding Donald J. Trump.

We have at least one nutjob member of Congress filing impeachment papers against Garland. Why? Because he ordered the search of Trump’s Florida home for classified papers the ex-president squirreled away … illegally!

Right-wing media hounds keep referring to the search as a “raid,” implying that the FBI agents pounced on the former president’s home, behind his back. Good grief! Garland performed this act by the book. It was legal and totally constitutional.

He is defending the agents and others within the Justice Department who have come under fire by the right-wingers who — were they investigating a Democratic former president — would be the darlings of the conservative media.

And I was struck by a particular phrase he used in defending the agents and other DOJ staffers. He declared his pride in “working alongside them.” Think of that for just a moment. There was no self-aggrandizement in that statement, no sense of “they work for me, therefore I am better than they are.” No. He stands shoulder to shoulder with the men and women he calls “patriotic public servants.”

Garland is a stellar public servant himself. I am glad he’s on the job. I also am grateful that President Biden persuaded this top-notch legal mind to stand firm in the face of criticism he had to know was coming his way.

Stand tall, Merrick Garland … and stay strong. The nation needs you.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, national news, national security

Hard to grasp consequence of probe

I hereby acknowledge the difficulty I am having in trying to wrap my noodle around the events of this week involving Donald J. Trump and the search that revealed what the world has learned he had squirreled away at his luxurious South Florida digs.

A major part of me wants the Justice Department to proceed with all deliberate speed in determining whether the ex-president committed crimes in taking highly sensitive documents out of the White House. My ol’ trick knee, which I acknowledge has been unreliable at times, is telling me that Attorney General Merrick Garland has the goods on The Donald.

His public statement, brief as it was, this week explaining what he approved and then his stout defense of the FBI and DOJ suggested to me that Garland is riled up.

I will offer an admittedly half-hearted salute to Trump for agreeing to allow the search warrant to be unsealed. He is going to play the victim card and his base is going to scarf it up. The rest of us should be prepared for what might be coming … and possibly sooner than we anticipate.

That would be a criminal indictment against a former president of the U.S.A. The charge? I don’t know. Violation of the Espionage Act is one possibility. So is a violation of the Presidential Records Act.

What perhaps is the most glaring mystery to me is trying to determine what in the world Trump expected to do with what the FBI agents recovered. It’s been reported widely that Trump doesn’t read documents. He was infamously impatient with daily national security briefings and never looked — or so we have been told — at the reams of papers his national security staff delivered to him each day.

And did those documents fetched from Mar-a-Lago contain nuclear secrets? If so, then … holy crap!

We know already that some of the documents were of the highest security levels imaginable. And a president cannot just de-classify them because he gives the word.

I maintain my implicit faith in the attorney general’s integrity. What remains to be determined is whether he has the courage to withstand what will be a torrent of rage if he delivers on what I now believe he must … which is a criminal indictment against a former president of the United States.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com