Affidavit details probable cause
The affidavit as released is of course full of redactions, across its 38 pages. But it reveals some interesting nuggets about the search, including that the Department of Justice and FBI had “probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction” would be found at Mar-a-Lago.
In another interesting section … the affidavit says that on 9 February 2022, the DoJ leaned that a preliminary review of 15 boxes taken to Mar-a-Lago “indicated that they contained ‘newspapers, magazines, printed news articles, photos, miscellaneous print-outs, notes, presidential correspondence, personal and post-presidential records, and ‘a lot of classified records’.
“Of most significant concern was that highly classified records were unfoldered, intermixed with other records, and otherwise unproperly [sic] identified.”
The affidavit reproduces a Trump statement after the issue became public, and then … is extensively redacted. The redacted passage is a chronological retelling of how the issue developed.
The next significant un-redacted passage contains the news that Trump’s own notes were included in the materials in question. It reads as follows:
“From May 16-18, 2022, FBI agents conducted a preliminary review of the FIFTEEN BOXES provided to NARA and identified documents with classification markings in fourteen of the FIFTEEN BOXES. A preliminary triage of the documents with classification markings revealed the following approximate numbers: 184 unique documents bearing classification markings, including 67 documents marked as CONFIDENTIAL, 92 documents marked as SECRET, and 25 documents marked as TOP SECRET. Further, the FBI agents observed markings reflecting the following compartments/dissemination controls: HCS, FISA, ORCON, NOFORN, and SI.
“Based on my training and experience, I know that documents classified at these levels typically contain NDI. Several of the documents also contained what appears to be FPOTUS’s [Trump’s] handwritten notes.
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Taking on the fossil fuel industry in West Virginia was always going to be a David v Goliath type battle, but after years of protests, lobbying and lawsuits, 68-year-old Becky Crabtree thought the community-led resistance had beaten the Mountain Valley pipeline (MVP) in a fair fight.
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So when news broke earlier in August that the state’s fossil-fuel friendly senator Joe Manchin had resurrected the pipeline, Crabtree, a high school science teacher who teaches students about the climate crisis, felt “numb”.
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Manchin, a conservative Democrat who receives more campaign financing from the fossil fuel industry – including pipeline companies – than any other lawmaker in Congress, had agreed to back his party’s historic climate legislation before the crucial midterm elections. But only after he negotiated a side-deal to fast-track the MVP.
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“It’s the unfairness that makes me so angry. It’s a deal with the devil,” said Crabtree, 68, who owns a 30-acre sheep farm in Lindside, Monroe county.
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Full story:
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White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has just finished briefing the media and taking questions and she was asked about Joe Biden’s remarks at a fundraiser last night where he referred to the “MAGA Republican philosophy” as akin to “semi-fascism”.
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Asked to explain what the US president meant by that remark, Jean-Pierre said of right-wing Republicans: “He was very powerful last night. When it comes to ‘MAGA Republicans’, when it comes to the extreme, ultra wing of the Republicans, they are attacking democracy, they are taking away rights and freedoms, they are using threats of violence, taking away voting rights, and he [Biden] called it what it is … and what many would argue, historians would agree with us on.”
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“He believes that presidents should be the strongest voice for democracy,” she added.
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Jean-Pierre also strove to differentiate between what she referred to as “traditional, conservative” Republicans and the [Trumpist] “Make America Great Again” rightwing loyalists to the former president.
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