The Trump Search Warrant for What?

Aug. 13, 2022 (EIRNS)—The release Friday, Aug. 12 of the search warrant issued by Attorney General Merrick Garland and his henchmen for the Aug. 8 raid on former President Donald Trump’s Florida home reveals the total fraud of this police-state action. Three alleged crimes are cited: “destroying or concealing documents to obstruct government investigations,” the “unlawful removal of government records,” and breach of “the Espionage Act.”

While the “Espionage Act” has the ring of treason in it, they are referring to a clause which relates to the “retrieval, storage, or transmission of national defense information or classified material.”

The warrant calls for seizing all boxes with classified documents, but also any boxes in the same area. It also calls for seizing “any government or presidential records created between Jan. 3, 2017 and Jan. 3, 2021”—i.e., take everything, a full-scale fishing expedition.

But the fact is that the President has the right and the power to declassify anything he wants. Executive orders issued by George W. Bush in 2003 and Barack Obama in 2009 make clear that the President and the Vice President do not have to follow stringent declassification procedures.

John Solomon, who is Trump’s representative to the National Archives, wrote that Trump’s office issued a statement to “Just the News”: “The very fact that these documents were present at Mar-a-Lago means they couldn’t have been classified.... He had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken into the residence were deemed to be declassified. 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 approve of declassification is absurd.” [Emphasis in original]

For some reason so far unexplained, one of the documents recorded by the FBI was about Trump’s pardon of Roger Stone.