The fight over how to deal with the classified documents that Donald Trump stole from the White House and hid away in Mar-a-Lago is continuing with rulings both from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and in the courtroom of “special master” Judge Raymond Dearie.
Considering how the last couple of days have brought Vladimir Putin calling for partial mobilization in Russia, President Joe Biden blasting Russia in the U.N. for significant violations of the charter, and a big prisoner swap that saw many Azovstal defenders and U.S. POWs returned in exchange for an oligarch and some captured Russian agents, it’s understandable that the last few updates haven’t gotten far into the nitty-gritty of events on the down.
In yet another sign of just how much everyone who is not Judge Aileen Cannon is fed up with Donald Trump’s lies about the documents that were removed from Mar-a-Lago, recently appointed special master, Judge Raymond Dearie, has ordered Trump’s legal team to be specific in its claims about “planted evidence.
Telepathy is the ability to communicate using only thoughts. Telekinesis is the ability to move objects with the mind. But Donald Trump believes he has an ability even more rare and unbelievable—teledeclassification, the ability to declassify Top Secret documents without saying a word to anyone.
In a Wednesday appearance with Sean Hannity, Trump denied that there had to be a process for declassification. No forms, no verification, not even any words.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden stepped to the podium at the United Nations General Council and took both Russia and Vladimir Putin to task. Biden pulled no punches in going after Russia for its “brutal, needless war” in Ukraine, for overt threats of nuclear war, and for violating the most basic principles of the United Nations.
On Sept. 13, Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman from northern Iran, was in Tehran to visit with her brother. She was walking with him near the entrance to a metro station when members of a “guidance patrol,” also known as the morality police, surrounded them. The religious police complained that Amini wasn’t properly wearing her hijab—a head covering women are required to wear under Iran’s strict religious dress codes.
Judge Raymond Dearie conducted his first hearing as “special master” over the documents the FBI removed from Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, and it was not a good day for Donald Trump’s legal team.
It’s been hard to locate any reasonable military response for Russia at this point in its failed invasion of Ukraine. Because there isn’t one. So Moscow is now scrambling for the means to justify even more attacks on civilian infrastructure—and civilians—and it thinks it has that plan in the form of a series of “referendums” to be carried out in occupied areas of Ukraine over the next week.
Until Tuesday, Donald Trump had been making a lot of public claims about having declassified documents, but he had never made that claim in court. In fact, as recently as Monday evening, Trump’s attorney in the “special master” proceeding argued that this wasn’t something that needed to be discussed. That’s no longer true.
Now that he has the “special master” he requested to deal with the documents he hoarded at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump is already finding reasons to object to the process. Specifically, Trump’s legal team is refusing to talk about whether, or how, Trump actually tried to declassify any of the documents by claiming it would harm their “defense to the merits of any subsequent indictment.
With every new revelation out of the Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago scandal, his theft of highly classified documents becomes even more blatant. And the idea that anyone—from a judge to Republicans in Congress—is still engaged in the pretense that what Trump did was no big deal, becomes ever more ridiculous.
On Friday evening, The Washington Post reported a new aspect to the Doc-a-Lago affair.
This is, in many ways, the easiest job of “war correspondent” anyone has ever had. No one is shooting at me. I’m not wearing a flack jacket, sleeping on a cot, or feeling the concussive thump as artillery strikes the ground nearby. The only threats I get arrive by email.
Russia has hit the dam at Kryvyi Rih with what is reported to be at least six ballistic missiles. The impact created sizable damage to a dam over the Inhulets River, resulting in a flood that for some time was raging downstream. Reportedly, several bridges have already been swept away, and a number of towns and villages on both sides of the river have experienced flooding as water levels rapidly rose.
Russia spent months building up the location of Kozacha Lopan, north of the city of Kharkiv. When Ukraine first began a counteroffensive in the area, back in April, Russia made protection of Kozacha Lopan a priority. It was seen as the gateway to the E105 highway crossing, the largest and most active border crossing between Russia and Ukraine.
While Donald Trump managed to find a highly unqualified judge who was willing to work hand in hand with his attorneys to grant his “special master” request, his court shopping isn’t always so effective.
The ruling from Judge Aileen Cannon, which grants Donald Trump an unprecedented “special master” and enjoins the Department of Justice from using the documents Trump stole in their criminal investigation, will be appealed. The ruling was always ridiculous and posed a threat to both the law and national security.
Now the Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced that it will appeal Cannon’s ruling to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
At this moment, thanks to a twisted ruling from a Trump-appointed judge, the Department of Justice can’t use the classified documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago in its ongoing criminal investigation. However, intelligence agencies are still working to respond to what was found in an unsecured store room, in a faux-leather cardboard box kept on a shelf in plain view, and in the drawers of Donald Trump’s desk.
The impact on national security is hard to overestimate.
Following up on earlier reports that among the documents that Donald Trump stole from the White House and carried off to Mar-a-Lago were some related to nuclear weapons, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday evening that Trump’s haul included details about the military of an unidentified foreign nation, including information on its nuclear capabilities.
Some days, it is simply much more fun to haul out the maps. This is one of those days.
Over the month of August, something changed in Russia’s illegal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. that something was the Ukrainian military consistently hitting Russian facilities of command, control, and supply well behind the front lines. How much of that change was directly attributable to HIMARS O’Clock! is debatable.
On Sunday, Judge Aileen Cannon stunned legal experts, along with those who have even a passing understanding of applicable law, by granting Donald Trump’s request to appoint a “special master” to review the documents taken during an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago that took place on Aug. 8.
Among the highly classified documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago was at least one that detailed the military defenses of a foreign nation, including its nuclear capabilities. The Washington Post is reporting that these documents were so tightly guarded that access to them could be granted only by the president and select cabinet members.
Reportedly, these documents are among the most closely held and valuable secrets the U.S. possesses.
On Monday, Ukraine began a counteroffensive in Kherson oblast. Depending on who you listen to, that effort has been wildly effective, liberating towns and villages from one end of the oblast to the other, or it’s been an utter failure, crushed by Russian troops who now control more territory than they did when Ukraine’s movement began. The truth is almost certainly in the middle.
On Friday, Judge Aileen Cannon unsealed the detailed inventory of materials that the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago. When it comes to the classified documents themselves, there’s not much new to learn here. The totals are the same as what we had already seen: 33 boxes containing over 100 documents carrying some form of classification.
Almost every description of the speech President Joe Biden is scheduled to give beginning at 8PM ET has said it will address “Trump-led extremism” or “MAGA Republicans.” However, White House statements on Biden’s “Soul of the Nation” speech have indicated that this is “not about any politician or any party.
This is a serious question for the nation: If Donald Trump were replaced on radio appearances by an impersonator parodying Trump’s positions … how would we know?
Over the last month, following the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago, which is now known to have turned up roughly 100 classified documents after Donald Trump’s lawyer signed a statement that there were none, court filings and public statements have filled in the details of what has been a very murky understanding of the “Doc-a-Lago” scandal. Trump left Washington, D.C., on Jan. 21, 2021.
What’s happening in Kherson isn’t exactly clear, and it’s likely to remain that way for some days. While so far Ukraine doesn’t seem to have taken any of what might be regarded as the most strategic targets—Vysokopillya in the north, Snihurivka guarding the routes east of Mykolaiv, or the city of Kherson itself—the territory that has reportedly changed hands does have considerable significance.
“Bothsiderism,” in which media outlets bend over backwards (and beyond) in order to find something they can slap Democrats over before daring to point out Republican actions, is one of the most corrosive tendencies plaguing the press. Also known as “false balance,” it happens when journalists attempt to make everything “equal” between the two parties, no matter how unequal statements or actions may actually be.
Donald Trump is a prime example of someone who lies so often, that sometimes he ends up running into the truth, just by accident. On Saturday afternoon, Trump cranked up underpopulated and deeply in debt social media scam Truth Social to deliver a message that, breaking with precedent, I’m going to post in full.
In what may be the most shocking story to emerge from the entire Mar-a-Lago document scandal, The New York Times is reporting that officials at intelligence agencies fear that among the classified information Donald Trump stole was details on U.S. assets embedded in foreign countries. The names, locations, and even the existence of such assets is among the most guarded secrets of the nation.