DOJ pushing to keep Trump from blocking release of classified docs report on immunity grounds

[BumRushDaShow]

38. "You are missing my point,"

No YOU all have missed the timelines that were provided over and over - and have done so intentionally. And you are now manufacturing retroactive knowledge of criminality that occurred under a previous administration that should have been clairvoyantly known about by the next one.

I am talking about Meadows and Patel being investigated as defendants in year 1. I am talking about Garland prosecuting Trump's inner circle, year 1 just like Robert Mueller did in less time.

The Mueller investigation took 2 years to finally ATTEMPT to release a report because Bill Barr - someone who DU ignores, delayed it because he planned to sanitize it.

Kash Patel and Mark Meadows should have been investigated and prosecuted by Garland early on in year one, or don't you believe that the theft of military/nuclear top secret classified documents was important enough?

NEWSFLASH - There is a thing called "Records Management" where EVERY AGENCY is responsible for their OWN documents and document disposition. EVERY agency has a "Records Control Schedule" - https://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/rcs

THAT is NOT DOJ's issue. It is the issue of the agency (or the military branch/division) and if they have problems with their records control that might require a criminal investigation, THEN they will call in DOJ (or in the case of DOD, they probably invoke the UCMJ).

Here are 3 sets (3 sources with overlapping dates) of the classified docs -

Here is the timeline -

A timeline of the investigation into Trump’s Mar-a-Lago docs

By JILL COLVIN and LINDSAY WHITEHURST
Published 10:25 PM EST, August 31, 2022

(snip)

A timeline of notable developments:

JAN. 20, 2021

Then-President Donald Trump left the White House for Florida ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration. According to the General Services Administration, members of Trump’s transition team were responsible for packing items into boxes, putting boxes on pallets and shrink-wrapping those pallets so they could be transported. Prior to shipping, GSA said it “required the outgoing transition team to certify in writing that the items being shipped were required to wind down the Office of the Former President and would be utilized as the Office transitioned to its new location in Florida.” GSA did not examine the contents of the boxes and “had no knowledge of the contents prior to shipping,” according to an agency spokesperson. GSA was also not responsible for the former president’s personal belongings, which were transported by a private moving company. Under the Presidential Records Act, presidential records are considered federal property — not private — and are supposed to be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration. Multiple federal laws govern the handling of classified and sensitive government documents, including statutes that make it a crime to remove such material and retain it at an unauthorized location.

MAY 2021

After NARA realized that documents from Trump’s presidency seemed to be missing from the material that it received as he left office, the agency requested the records from Trump on or about May 6, 2021, according to a heavily redacted affidavit made public last week.

DECEMBER 2021:

NARA “continued to make requests” for records it believed to be missing for several months, according to the affidavit. Around late December 2021, a Trump representative informed the agency that an additional 12 boxes of records that should have been turned over had been found at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago club and residence and were ready to be retrieved.

JAN. 18, 2022

NARA received 15 boxes of presidential records that had been stored at Mar-a-Lago — 14 of which, it would later be revealed, contained classified documents. The documents were found mixed in with an assortment of other material, including newspapers, magazines, photos and personal correspondence. In total, the boxes were found to contain 184 documents with classified markings, including 67 marked confidential, 92 secret and 25 top secret. Agents who inspected the boxes also found special markings suggesting they included information from highly sensitive human sources or the collection of electronic “signals” authorized by a court under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

FEB. 9, 2022

The special agent in charge of NARA’s Office of the Inspector General sent a referral to the Justice Department via email after a preliminary review of the boxes revealed numerous classified documents.

(snip)

Here is another link showing the timeline with additional dates -

Timeline: The government's efforts to get sensitive documents back from Trump's Mar-a-Lago

By Robert Legare, Arden Farhi, Melissa Quinn

June 9, 2023 / 6:17 PM EDT / CBS News

(snip)

Feb. 9: The Archives' Office of the Inspector General sends a referral to the Justice Department requesting it investigate Trump's handling of records. The referral notes a preliminary review of the 15 boxes taken from Mar-a-Lago indicated they contained newspapers, printed news articles, photos, notes, presidential correspondence 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 referral stated.

Feb. 18: David Ferriero, then-archivist of the United States, sends a letter to House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney informing her some of the boxes retrieved by the Archives in mid-January contained items marked as classified national security information, and asked Trump's representatives to continue searching for any additional presidential records that had not been transferred to the Archives. Ferriero tells Maloney that because the Archives identified classified information in the boxes, its staff had been in communication with the Justice Department.

April 11: The White House Counsel's Office formally transmits a request that the Archives provide the FBI access to the 15 boxes retrieved from Mar–a-Lago for its review.

April 12: The Archives says it communicated with Trump's "authorized representative" about the 15 boxes of seized records and told his attorney Evan Corcoran about the Justice Department's "urgency" in needing access to them. The agency also advises Trump's counsel it intended to provide the FBI with the documents the next week. Corcoran later requests the Archives delay the disclosure to the FBI to April 29.

(snip)

And a 3rd timeline source (with some additional info/timeframes not in the other timelines) -

Timeline: The special counsel inquiry into Trump’s handling of classified documents

By Marshall Cohen, Holmes Lybrand and Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN
Updated 7:37 PM EDT, Thu July 27, 2023

(snip)

Here’s a timeline of the important developments in the blockbuster investigation.

(snip)

July 2021

In a taped conversation, Trump acknowledges that he still has a classified Pentagon document about a possible attack against Iran, according to CNN reporting. The recording, which was made at Trump’s golf club in New Jersey, indicates that Trump understood that he retained classified material after leaving the White House. The special counsel later obtained this audiotape, a key piece of evidence in his inquiry.

(snip)

February 9, 2022

NARA asks the Justice Department to investigate Trump’s handling of White House records and whether he violated the Presidential Records Act and other laws related to classified information. The Presidential Records Act requires all records created by a sitting president to be turned over to the National Archives at the end of their administration.

February 18, 2022

NARA informs the Justice Department that some of the documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago included classified material. NARA also tells the department that, despite being warned it was illegal, Trump occasionally tore up government documents while he was president.

April and May 2022

On April 7, NARA publicly acknowledges for the first time that the Justice Department is involved, and news outlets report that prosecutors have launched a criminal probe into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents. Around this time, FBI agents quietly interview Trump aides at Mar-a-Lago about the handling of presidential records as part of their widening investigation.

(snip)

Once DOJ had this info FROM NARA because THAT is how federal agencies operate, they proceeded to interview and gather info in order to have evidence to create affidavits to support search and seizure warrants... where this happened in August of 2022 -

FBI executes search warrant at Trump's Mar-a-Lago in document investigation

This has some more info on the SEARCH - https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142959720

6 months after DOJ received the referral from NARA, they did their search.

J6 timeline -

Inside Garland’s Effort to Prosecute Trump


By Glenn Thrush and Adam Goldman

Reporting from Washington

Published March 22, 2024 Updated March 27, 2024

After being sworn in as attorney general in March 2021, Merrick B. Garland gathered his closest aides to discuss a topic too sensitive to broach in bigger groups: the possibility that evidence from the far-ranging Jan. 6 investigation could quickly lead to former President Donald J. Trump and his inner circle. At the time, some in the Justice Department were pushing for the chance to look at ties between pro-Trump rioters who assaulted the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, his allies who had camped out at the Willard Hotel, and possibly Mr. Trump himself.

Mr. Garland said he would place no restrictions on their work, even if the “evidence leads to Trump,” according to people with knowledge of several conversations held over his first months in office. “Follow the connective tissue upward,” said Mr. Garland, adding a directive that would eventually lead to a dead end: “Follow the money.” With that, he set the course of a determined and methodical, if at times dysfunctional and maddeningly slow, investigation that would yield the indictment of Mr. Trump on four counts of election interference in August 2023.

(snip)

People around Mr. Garland, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Justice Department affairs, say there would be no case against Mr. Trump had Mr. Garland not acted decisively. And any perception that the department had made Mr. Trump a target from the outset, without exploring other avenues, would have doomed the investigation. “Don’t confuse thoughtful with unduly cautious,” said a former deputy attorney general, Jamie S. Gorelick, who sent Mr. Garland, then her top aide, to oversee the prosecution of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. “He was fearless. You could see it then, and you could see it when he authorized the search at Mar-a-Lago.”

Mr. Garland’s allies point to how, by the summer of 2021, the attorney general and his powerful deputy, Lisa O. Monaco, were so frustrated with the pace of the work that they created a team to investigate Trump allies who gathered at the Willard Hotel ahead of Jan. 6 — John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Roger J. Stone Jr. — and possible connections to the Trump White House, according to former officials. That team would lay the groundwork for the investigation that Mr. Smith would take over as special counsel a year and a half later. But a host of factors, some in Mr. Garland’s control, others not, slowed things down.

(snip)

Much more... https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/22/us/politics/trump-jan-6-merrick-garland.html

No paywall (gift link)