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If recent history is a guide, one of the more dangerous places for a lawyer to be is by the side of former President Donald Trump.
Trump's longtime fixer Michael Cohen went to prison for tax evasion and false statements. His friend and personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani has been suspended from legal practice in New York for making "demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump."
Now, with more details emerging about the Justice Department probe of how top secret documents came to be stored at Trump's Florida resort, his legal representatives are once again under scrutiny.
"If you're a lawyer representing Donald Trump, the chances of you getting in trouble always seem to be present," said Stephen Saltzburg, a law professor at George Washington University and a former Justice Department official. "I think that all of the lawyers who have been involved or interacting with the archivist and the DOJ are at risk here."
What Trump's lawyers did and didn't do will be the focus of sustained attention from investigators and reporters as the investigation into obstruction of justice and mishandling of government secrets unfolds in the months to come.
Federal prosecutors said in court papers this week that a person acting as a custodian of records at the Mar-a-Lago resort signed a letter attesting that they had conducted a "diligent search" for documents and had not retained any copies in June 2022.
Only weeks later, prosecutors wrote, the FBI recovered "twice as many documents with classification markings as the 'diligent search' that the former President's counsel and other representatives had weeks to perform calls into serious question the representations made in the June 3 certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter."
In a passage of the new court filing that describes likely attempts to conceal documents and obstruct justice, the Justice Department seemed to lift some of the blame from one Trump attorney. Boxes of material had been moved out of a storage room at Mar-a-Lago, authorities wrote, but those boxes "formerly in the Storage Room were not returned prior to counsel's review" of the materials.
Former prosecutors who now defend white-collar criminal cases said it would be aggressive if the Justice Department were to prosecute Trump for lying to his attorneys, but that it's happened before.
They point to a 2004 case involving the New York company Computer Associates. Executives there misled lawyers conducting an internal investigation into fraud at the business, knowing those statements would be passed along to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department.
"The lie does not need to be made to the government," wrote former Florida-based U.S. attorney Wilfredo Ferrer in a 2017 note to clients of his law firm, Holland & Knight.
"It really takes a highly unusual fact pattern to get a judge to tell a lawyer that he has to be a witness against his own client," said Kirby Behre, a partner at Miller Chevalier and a former federal prosecutor.
"The issue in these cases is always, did the client tell the lawyer the truth?" Behre added.
Behre said the situation could arise in a slightly different way — that if Trump winds up being prosecuted, he will need to disavow the letter his representatives provided the Justice Department in June 2022.
"In a way, that's a scenario that could cause Trump to sideline his lawyer," he said.
IN OTHER WORDS: DID TRUMP LIE TO HIS LAWYERS ABOUT THERE BEING NO MORE SENSITIVE DOCUMENTS AT THE RESIDENCE?
IN OTHER WORDS: TRUMP AND/OR HIS REPS LIED ABOUT RETURNING ALL SENSITIVE MATERIALS. THE SEARCH WARRANT RETRIEVED CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS THAT SHOULD HAVE TURNED OVER, BUT WERE DELIBERATELY WITHHELD.
TO MY READERS: FIRST IT WAS MY PICTURE REMOVED...
...NOW GOOGLE HAS STOPPED KEEPING TRACK OF MY NUMBERS.
I HAVE GONE FROM 2000-3000 A DAY TO 0. YOU CAN SEE MY NUMBERS CHART ON MY WEB/BLOG PAGE.
I WONDER WHO/WHAT COULD BE CAUSING IT?
FASCISTS ARE FOUND EVERYWHERE.
- LIKE FOXNEWS, THESE ARE NOT NEWS PROFESSIONALS.
- PAID PROPAGANDISTS HAVE NO EDITORIAL STANDARDS,
SO STOP EXPECTING INTELLECTUALLY SOUND REPORTING
OF CURRENT EVENTS.
- REMEMBER, THERE ARE TRADITIONAL NETWORK NEWS SOURCES,
( NOT OWNED BY SINCLAIR BROADCASTING), AS WELL AS MSNBC,
WHO ARE NOT YET RUN FROM MOSCOW OR MAR-A-LAGO.
HOWEVER, IF WE LOOK AT HISTORY, WHAT ACTION CAN BE TAKEN
TO FISCALLY HARM THE TRUMP TREASON NETWORK OF MEDIA OUTLETS?
NO, WE DON'T NEED TO DEMONSTRATE, AND SEND ANGRY LETTERS TO CNN.
(LIKE THE OWNERSHIP CARES. THEIR DESIRE IS TO BECOME MORE TRUMP FRIENDLY)
HOW ABOUT THIS?
LEARN WHO PAYS THE BILLS. WHO ARE THE SPONSORS? THOSE OVER THE AIR
COMMERCIALS PROVIDE THE INCOME THAT SUPPLEMENTS WHATEVER FUNDS
THEY GET FROM FASCIST ORG.
PERHAPS, FROM HISTORY, YOU REMEMBER THE FOLLOWING:
THE STAMP ACT
BOYCOTT. BOYCOTT. BOYCOTT.
TAKE AIM AT THE SPONSORS, THAT IS
THE ACHILLES HEEL.
THEN VOTE IN NOVEMBER, AND MAKE
SURE ALL STATE RETURNS ARE
MONITORED PROPERLY.
WHY DID THE FBI AND JUSTICE DEPT. DECIDE TO SEARCH DONALD TRUMPS RESIDENCE?
READ THE AFFIDAVIT.
AFFIDAVIT- IN SIMPLE TERMS, IS A DOCUMENT CONTAINING A DECLARATION OF TRUTH REGARDING FACTUAL DATA SUBMITTED TO THE COURT IN BOTH CIVIL OR CRIMINAL CASES. THE AGENCY OR PERSON(S) FILING THE AFFIDAVIT IS SWEARING THAT THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THE BODY OF THE DOCUMENT IS, TO THE BEST OF THEIR KNOWLEDGE, TRUE. (STATEMENTS MADE IN THE AFFIDAVIT ARE DONE UNDER OATH, SO FALSE OR UNTRUE STATEMENTS COULD LEAD TO PROSECUTION IF THEY WERE MADE WITH THE INTENT TO DECEIVE THE COURT)
AN AFFIDAVIT WAS SUBMITTED TO THE COURT SEEKING A SEARCH WARRANT FOR DONALD TRUMPS RESIDENCE AT MAR-A-LAGO.
THE FOLLOWING WOULD BE INCLUDED IN AN AFFIDAVIT FOR A JUDGE TO GRANT THE REQUEST;
- ALLEDGING SPECIFIC CRIMES THAT ARE/HAVE BEEN COMMITTED, PROVIDING EVIDENCE ALREADY ACCUMULATED.
- THIS EVIDENCE REVEALS THAT DONALD TRUMP HAD KNOWLEDGE OF THESE CRIMES, BY ENGAGING IN, AND/OR COVERING UP THE ACTIVITY.
- THAT THE EVIDENCE PRESENTED HERE INDICATES THAT FURTHER PROOF COULD BE FOUND IN DONALD TRUMPS RESIDENCE.
WHAT MUST BE REMEMBERED IS THIS: THAT "PROBABLE CAUSE" OR A COMPELLING REASON(S) MUST BE OFFERED IN THE AFFIDAVIT THAT INDICATES THERE IS EVIDENCE OF CRIMINAL CONDUCT BY DONALD TRUMP. FURTHER, IT IS SUFFICIENT ENOUGH FOR A JUDGE TO BELIEVE THAT A SEARCH WOULD PROVIDE ADDITIONAL EVIDENCE OF GUILT.
EVERY TIME YOU LISTEN TO DONALD TRUMP, OR HEAR ONE OF HIS SYCOPHANTIC FOLLOWERS TRY TO FIND AN EXCUSE FOR BETRAYING THEIR COUNTRY, LISTEN TO THIS SONG AND VIDEO. IT REPRESENTS THE "GOOD" THAT AMERICANS ARE CAPABLE OF, INSTEAD OF THE "EVIL" THAT DER FUEHRER DONALD AND HIS GANG OF NEO-FASCISTS REPRESENT.
LINK: https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1mrGmaBEAXVGy
A redacted affidavit released on Friday said that more than 184 classified documents were retrieved from former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reports. The document, which was obtained by WSJ, said there was “probable cause to believe that additional documents” with classified information remained on the property and “also probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction” would be discovered there.
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