Aug. 17, 2022 - Epoch Times
10:39
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| The details about what led up to the FBI raid on President Trump's home have just gotten, you can say, a new twist, with the revelation from President Trump's own legal team that during his administration, President Trump had a standing order that declassified all documents that were taken from the White House over to his residence. | |
| However, before we dive into those specifics, let's back up for a moment, and let me lay out for you what was just revealed over the weekend in regards to the FBI raid. | |
| Specifically, three days ago, on Friday afternoon, Judge Bruce Reinhardt officially unsealed the seven-page search warrant that was used by the FBI to raid President Trump's home. | |
| Now, we here at the Epoch Times have both a copy of the search warrant as well as the attached property receipt showing us the items that the FBI wound up taking away with them. | |
| However, let's start with the search warrant itself. | |
| Because it's within this warrant that three important questions are answered. | |
| Specifically, where on the premises the FBI was ordered to search, what were they actually looking for, as well as the legal justification for the raid in the first place. | |
| Now, in terms of the first question, where on the premises the FBI agents were allowed to search, well, here's what the search warrant actually states. | |
| The locations to be searched include the 45 office... | |
| All storage rooms and all other rooms or areas within the premises used or available to be used by the former president of the United States and his staff and in which boxes or documents could be stored, including all structures or buildings on the estate. | |
| It does not include areas currently, i.e., at the time of the search, being occupied, rented, or used by third parties, such as Mar-a-Lago members, and not otherwise used or available to be used by the former president of the United States and his staff, such as private guest suites. | |
| And so essentially, the FBI agents were ordered to search everywhere that either President Trump himself or any of his associates were using on the property. | |
| However, since Mar-a-Lago is a resort, they were specifically ordered to not search any of the guest rooms. | |
| Then, in terms of what they were actually looking for, here is what the search warrant goes on to say under the tab... | |
| titled Property to be Searched. | |
| Quote, all physical documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed, including the following. | |
| Any physical documents with classification markings, along with any containers or boxes, including any other contents in which such documents are located. | |
| Information, including communications in any form regarding the retrieval, storage, or transmission of national defense information or classified material. | |
| Any government and or presidential records created between January 20th, 2017 and January 20th of 2021. | |
| Or any evidence of the knowing alteration, destruction, or concealment of any government and or presidential records. | |
| Or of any documents with classification markings. | |
| And so essentially, to sum it all up, they were looking for any and all government documents that were dated sometime between when President Trump was inaugurated in January of 2017 until he left office in January of 2021. | |
| And then lastly... | |
| The big question that's been standing for a while now is what specific legal justification did the government have to conduct this raid at all? | |
| And it appears that, at least according to this warrant, President Trump is currently under investigation for the alleged violations of three separate laws. | |
| Specifically, Title 18 U.S. Code 2071, which has to do with the concealment, removal, or mutilation of government documents. | |
| Title 18 U.S. Code 793 of the Espionage Act, which has to do with the gathering, transmitting, or losing information pertaining to national defense. | |
| And then lastly, Title 18 U.S. Code 1519, which has to do with the destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations. | |
| And for your reference, conviction under these three different statutes can lead to both imprisonment as well as potentially heavy fines. | |
| And so then, with this search warrant as the basis, the FBI agents raided Trump's residence one week ago today, and they took a plethora of various documents, notes, records, as well as several boxes. | |
| And according to the FBI manifest, some of the records were marked as confidential, some of them were marked as being secret, and several of them were even marked as being top secret. | |
| And now here's where the real debate begins. | |
| Because on the one hand, you have the Department of Justice, being led by Merrick Garland, making the case that President Trump was in possession of classified documents, including, of course, top secret documents, and therefore, he is potentially guilty of breaking those three different laws that we outlined earlier in the search warrant. | |
| On the other hand, though, shortly after this search warrant was made public, President Trump's lawyers came out with a statement, saying that all the documents in President Trump's possession were declassified by him in the process of being moved over to Mar-a-Lago. | |
| Specifically, in a statement that President Trump's office made to Just the News, they said that President Trump had a standing order during his administration to declassify any document that was taken from the White House over to his residence. | |
| Here's part of what their statement said. | |
| The very fact that these documents were present at Mar-a-Lago means they couldn't have been classified. | |
| As we can all relate to, everyone ends up having to bring home their work from time to time. | |
| American presidents are no different. | |
| President Trump, in order to prepare for work the next day, often took documents, including classified documents, from the Oval Office to the residence. | |
| He had a standing order. | |
| The documents removed from the Oval Office and taken to the residence were deemed to be declassified. | |
| And so essentially, President Trump's defense here is rooted in the legal principle that the President of the United States, alongside the Vice President, are the ultimate declassifying authority within the U.S. government. | |
| They are the ones who can determine what is classified and what is declassified. | |
| And this is not a new concept. | |
| For instance, back in 2009, President Obama issued an executive order. | |
| You can see it up on screen for yourself. | |
| And in that order, he laid out the stringent process which all federal officials, as well as all federal agencies, need to follow in order to declassify documents. | |
| But in that executive order, he explicitly exempted the sitting president from having to follow those procedures. | |
| Furthermore, John Ratcliffe, the former director of national intelligence under President Trump, he likewise made a statement just two days ago asserting that U.S. presidents have the ultimate declassification authority in terms of all government documents. | |
| Here's specifically what he said: "The president does have ultimate declassification authority. | |
| He can literally declassify, and President Trump had that authority, and could declassify anything you want while he was president." However, it's worth noting that this opinion is not universal. | |
| For instance, over on NBC, they recently had an interview with Richard Immerman, the assistant deputy director of national intelligence during the Obama administration, and he made the argument that even with a president, there must be a formal declassification procedure. | |
| Here's what he said, again, during that interview over on NBC. Now, ironically, his statement does appear to be in contradiction to President Obama's own executive order, the one we read earlier regarding how the executive office of the U.S. president is exempt from the formal declassification process. | |
| But even just outside of the irony aspect, the office of President Trump likewise disagrees with this interpretation as well. | |
| Here was their response to this argument. | |
| Quote... | |
| The power to classify and declassify documents rests solely with the President of the United States. | |
| The idea that some paper-pushing bureaucrat with classification authority delegated by the President needs to prove of declassification is absurd. | |
| And so, the debate continues. | |
| And of course, this is a developing story, and as new details emerge, we will report them to you as best as we can. | |
| However, in the meantime, I think that we can all rest assured that the news cycle in this country for the foreseeable future will be more focused on the minute details regarding the executive declassification laws rather than the minor problems that we're facing in this country, like fentanyl deaths, raging inflation, our porous southern border, the anniversary of the Afghanistan withdrawal, or the actual risk of war with China, Russia, Iran, and so on. | |
| Instead, we will be treated for the next several months with talking heads discussing the legality of presidential declassification. | |
| a lot to look forward to. | |
| Regardless, if you'd like to read these new unsealed documents for yourself, I'll throw a link to them down into the description box so you can check them out for yourself and see if we missed anything. | |
| I'd love to know your thoughts. | |
| And it's also worth noting that although we have the receipt for property and the actual search warrant, the affidavit that accompanied the search warrant has yet to be unsealed, and so we have not seen that as of yet. | |
| Regardless though, if you appreciate content like this, I do hope you take a moment to smash that like button so this video can be shared out to ever more people. | |
| And also, if you haven't already, subscribe to this YouTube channel as well. | |
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| All right, the sponsor of today's episode is a phenomenal company called AMAC. That's A-M-A-C, and it stands for the Association of Mature American Citizens. | |
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| I'll also throw a link down in the description box below. | |
| And lastly, I thought I'd mention that over on Epic TV, just earlier today we published a great interview between myself and Jeff Landry, the Louisiana Attorney General, about his case against the federal government regarding how the government has essentially been using big tech companies to censor the citizens that they can't censor themselves due to the First Amendment. | |
| Here's a trailer for that episode. | |
| ...basically co-opted or colluded or encouraged... | |
| During the pandemic, we really saw the government censoring certain speech, trying to push off therapeuticals, you know, only allowing positive stories on certain COVID treatments like vaccines or suppressing other information. | |
| We hear it. | |
| We had those whistleblowers came out and said, this is exactly what they were doing. | |
| Basically, having an arm of the federal government, an agency, whose label, whose title is the Disinformation Board, is prima facie evidence of a First Amendment violation. | |
| The government is not supposed to censor information. | |
| That is the foundation upon which the freedom of speech exists. | |
| If you'd like to check out that episode in its entirety, you can do so over on Epic TV, our awesome no-censorship video platform. | |
| The link will be right there at the very top of the description box. | |
| I hope you check it out. | |
| And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epic Times. |
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