Research, editing : Gan Yung Chyan, KUCINTA SETIA
Former President Donald Trump said Sunday that privileged material was taken during the FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago property and demanded it back.
“Oh great! It has just been learned that the FBI, in its now famous raid of Mar-a-Lago, took boxes of privileged ‘attorney-client’ material, and also ‘executive’ privileged material, which they knowingly should not have taken,” the former president wrote on Truth Social, as he posted a Fox News article that cited anonymous sources for the claims.
Attorney-client privilege makes reference to a legal privilege that allows communications between a client and their attorney confidential.
“By copy of this TRUTH (post), I respectfully request that these documents be immediately returned to the location from which they were taken. Thank you!” Trump also wrote Sunday morning.
The FBI said it took classified records from Trump’s Florida residence during an unprecedented raid last week, which was announced by the former president himself. It’s not clear what the documents entailed.
According to a property receipt that was unsealed on Aug. 12 by a judge in the case, some of those documents were marked top secret, and a warrant in the case said Trump is being investigated for possibly violating provisions under the Espionage Act as well as obstruction of justice.
Since the raid was announced on Aug. 8, both the FBI and Department of Justice have remained mostly tight-lipped about what the FBI was searching for and why.
Tight-lipped
It wasn’t until the afternoon of Aug. 11 that Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a terse statement during a news conference, saying he personally authorized the raid. He did not elaborate on the FBI’s investigation. The affidavit in the case has not been unsealed—only the warrant and property receipt.
“First, I personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant in this matter,” Garland said during the press conference. “Second, the Department does not take such a decision lightly. Where possible, it is standard practice to seek less intrusive means as an alternative to a search, and to narrowly scope any search that is undertaken.”
The warrant and receipt were unsealed on Aug. 12 by Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart after several news outlets and transparency watchdogs requested that it be released to the public.
“The locations to be searched include the ‘45 Office,’ all storage rooms, and all other rooms or areas within the premises used or available to be used by FPOTUS and his staff and in which boxes or documents could be stored, including all structures or buildings on the estate,” the warrant stated.
The warrant also provided agents the authority to take “all physical documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed” that violate the U.S. Code. That includes classified documents and materials with presidential seals created throughout the entirety of Trump’s presidency.
The FBI and Department of Justice have not returned requests for comment.
News (2)
Trump in "bureaucratic battle" over classified documents
Former White House official Kash Patel on Sunday (14 August 2022) revealed former President Donald Trump has been involved in a battle with the federal government to declassify documents before last week’s FBI raid.
Patel, who was a top official in the Department of Defense, said Trump declassified numerous documents.
“President Trump made me his representative a month ago, and we’ve been in a bureaucratic battle,” he told Fox News on Sunday morning. “We found whole sets of documents we got out to the American public … about 60 percent.”
Patel, who hosts “Kash’s Corner” for Epoch TV, added that Trump “made it his mission to declassify and be transparent.”
“In October 2020, he issued a sweeping declassification order for every single Russiagate document and every single [former Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton document,” Patel said, adding that “whole sets of documents” were declassified under his watch.
“And this is a key fact … President Trump, as a sitting president, is a unilateral authority for declassification,” he continued. “He can literally stand over a set of documents and say ‘these are now declassified,’ and that is done with definitive action immediately.”
Patel further noted that due to the Department of Justice’s latest actions and the FBI’s ongoing investigation, Americans “will never be allowed to see the Russiagate docs or any other docs that President Trump lawfully declassified, and they will hide it from the public.”
Other details
Late last week, a U.S. magistrate judge ordered the release of the FBI warrant and property record used to raid Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. The documents showed the FBI seized alleged classified documents and said the former president may be under investigation for possibly violating the 1917 Espionage Act and obstruction of justice, although neither the Justice Department nor FBI have released the affidavit in the case.
In late 2020, Trump issued a declassification memo that referred to materials connected to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, which has been the subject of intense controversy and scrutiny. Republicans and Trump have long asserted the investigation used fabricated information and anonymous leaks to the press to denigrate the former president.
“I hereby declassify the remaining materials in the binder. This is my final determination under the declassification review and I have directed the Attorney General to implement the redactions proposed in the FBI’s January 17 submission and return to the White House an appropriately redacted copy,” then-President Trump wrote on Dec. 30, 2020, or just three weeks before Joe Biden was sworn in as president.
After the warrant and property receipt were unsealed, Trump posted to his Truth Social page that the materials the FBI allegedly took were “all declassified.”
“They didn’t need to ‘seize’ anything. They could have had it anytime they wanted without playing politics and breaking into Mar-a-Lago. It was in secured storage, with an additional lock put on as per their request,” he wrote on the website on 12 August.
On Sunday, the former president wrote that among other items that were taken by agents, attorney-client material and executive privileged material were removed from Mar-a-Lago.
“By copy of this TRUTH, I respectfully request that these documents be immediately returned to the location from which they were taken. Thank you!” Trump wrote.
News (3)
Trump responds to nuclear documents reports
Former President Donald Trump said reports that the FBI was allegedly searching for documents on nuclear weapons at his Mar-a-Lago residence is a “hoax” and likened it to years-long claims that he was a Russian agent.
“Nuclear weapons issue is a Hoax, just like Russia, Russia, Russia was a Hoax, two Impeachments were a Hoax, the Mueller investigation was a Hoax, and much more,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday morning.
The former president alleged that the “same sleazy people [are] involved” in making allegations about nuclear weapons and questioned why FBI agents did not allegedly allow his lawyers to inspect their work at Mar-a-Lago on Monday. The FBI, he said, made his team “wait outside in the heat” and “wouldn’t let them get even close.”
Anonymous sources told the Washington Post and other legacy media on Thursday night that classified documents related to nuclear weapons were being searched by the FBI. It’s not clear if the FBI agents recovered anything.
Neither the FBI nor the Department of Justice has issued public comments on the latest allegation, and both agencies have not elaborated on why agents took the unprecedented step of raiding the home of a former president.
The former commander-in-chief also made reference to a dossier of mostly debunked claims penned by ex-British spy Christopher Steele, who was hired by an opposition research firm that was in turn, used by a Democrat-aligned law firm on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. In late 2019, the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, found there were numerous errors and omissions when the FBI applied for secretive warrants to surveil members of Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Trump lawyer Christina Bobb told Fox News on Thursday (11 August 2022) that the Washington Post’s reports are a bid to sow fear among the American population.
“This is what the Democrats do. They don’t have any good reason for doing what they did. The pathetic presser that Merrick Garland held for three minutes was insufficient, so they had to create fear,” Bobb told the outlet, adding, “They are not on solid ground … they had to come up with something that would potentially terrify the American public into freely giving up their constitutional freedoms.”
More details
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday said he “personally approved” the FBI search but could not discuss what or why federal law enforcement agents were investigating. He spoke just moments after the Department of Justice filed a motion to unseal the search warrant in the case, coming a day after a judge in the case ordered the agency to file a response in request to several groups’ requests to unseal it.
Court documents filed by the Justice Department said that the “public’s clear and powerful interest in understanding what occurred under these circumstances weighs heavily in favor of unsealing.” The motion to unseal parts of the warrant, including a “redacted Property Receipt listing items seized pursuant to the search,” was signed off by U.S. Attorney Juan Gonzalez as well as a DOJ official on counterintelligence, Jay Bratt.
On Thursday night, Trump wrote on social media that he agreed the warrant could be made public.
“Not only will I not oppose the release of documents related to the unAmerican, unwarranted, and unnecessary raid and break-in of my home in Palm Beach, Florida, Mar-a-Lago, I am going a step further by ENCOURAGING the immediate release of those documents, even though they have been drawn up by radical left Democrats,” wrote the former president.
It was Trump himself who confirmed the FBI raid on his Truth Social account on Monday evening (8 August 2022). Following the disclosure, top Republicans called on the Justice Department to release documents and provide reasons for the escalation.
Wyoming's disappearing Democrats not shy about "crossover" voting
Reporter : John Haughey, The Epoch Times PREMIUM
There is no secret cabal of Democrats working with Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-Wyo.) campaign to reelect the most ardent Republican critic of former President Donald Trump.
Many Wyoming Democrats will tell you openly that they are switching parties on 16 August 2022 to cast their ballots for Cheney in her GOP U.S. House primary against Fort Laramie land use-water rights attorney Harriet Hageman.
But few think it will matter.
Hageman, who has been endorsed by Trump, leads Cheney by nearly 30 percentage points—57 percent to 28 percent—with 41 percent saying that they’re voting more against Cheney than for Hageman, according to a University of Wyoming survey released on Aug. 11. The poll of 562 likely primary voters was taken July 25 to Aug. 6.
Unless Cheney has a stealth reservoir of support—“quiet Republicans,” she called them recently—within the GOP, there aren’t enough Democrats or, for that matter, enough non-Republicans, to have much efficacy in the state.
Math confirms the veracity of polls that show a very narrow path to a third term for Cheney, who enraged many Wyoming Republicans for voting to impeach Trump, serving as co-chair of the House’s Jan. 6 House committee, and being among Trump’s most severe, unrelenting critics.
Of 284,557 registered voters on Aug. 1, 207,674 were enrolled as Republicans, according to the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office. There were 39,753 registered Democrats and 33,769 registered as unaffiliated, with about 4,000 registered with third parties.
In January, the Secretary of State’s Office documented that there were 280,741 registered voters with 196,179 signed on to the Republican Party, 45,822 registered as Democrats, and 35,344 registered as unaffiliated.
Earlier polls indicate about 70 percent of the state’s Republicans support Hageman over Cheney. According to some estimates, the embattled incumbent would need at least 40,000 votes from non-Republicans to make up that interparty difference.
“We see some movement from registered Democrat to registered Republican,” Wyoming Democratic Party communications director David Martin told The Epoch Times regarding the past few months. “But we don’t believe it will influence the GOP (primary) as much as people think it will.”
At a weekly gathering of about a dozen Sweetwater County Democratic Party committee members at Los Cabos restaurant in Rock Springs on Aug. 12, there was no cabal or orchestrated plan to vote for Cheney—just people who say they want their vote to count in a state that’s overwhelmingly dominated by the Republican Party.
Carolyn Molson says that instead of asking for a Democratic ballot on primary day, she’ll request a Republican one “because we have no voice as Democrats and no power” in the state.
Wyoming is one of six states where primaries are “partially open,” meaning that voters in one party can vote in another party’s primary if they register with the party before casting a ballot.
Therefore, under Wyoming law, voters can change parties on primary day by registering with the party they want a ballot for. If the state’s GOP-dominated legislature wanted to change that law, it would. But it shot down a proposal to close the primaries during its 2022 session so, obviously, a majority of lawmakers see “crossover” voting as a benefit to them.
“There are a lot of people trending in this direction,” Molson said. “I’m not going to be [a Republican] in the general election.”
Tom Gagnon, a writer whose opinion columns are published locally and across the state, has already done the deed by voting early.
“I voted for Liz,” he said. “This is the first time in my life that I’ve voted as a Republican. Unless things change, I’m going to stay a Republican” because, in Wyoming now, the state’s battles are being fought within the Republican Party.
Leesa Kuhlmann is running for the state senate as a Democrat. But on Aug. 16, she’s registering as a Republican and getting a Republican ballot.
“The people of Wyoming should be proud [of Cheney],” Kuhlmann said. “I don’t agree with her politically but at least I have respect for her. She has a conscience. You have to be proud of her.”
Why crossover voting?
But they were the outliers in the group. Most were sticking with Democratic candidates, regardless of their chances to win in a general election.
“Crossover? No,” said Norma Prevedel, who, along with her husband Frank Prevedel, who served as a Democratic state senator representing Sweetwater County for 14 years, has already voted.
Barbara Smith and Mark Kot are also sticking with the Democratic Party when they vote on Aug. 16. As nominated Democratic precinct committee members, they can’t register outside the party.
Smith, a career educator and poet, said Wyoming crossover voting has gained a lot of national attention, but it’s the only way for Democrats to appeal to Republicans during elections.
“It’s not just about Cheney,” she said. “All these people in Sweetwater County” who are Democrats want Republicans to recognize they exist.
“If you want your vote to count,” crossover voting is a wedge that can help make that happen, according to Kot, a retired Sweetwater County planner who serves as the chair of the Wyoming Water Development Commission, despite being a Democrat.
Martin said as Republicans rip into each other in primary battles between Trump-endorsed or Trump-supporting candidates and “RINOs”—Republicans in Name Only who seek to shift the party’s core values to accommodate more of the left—the Democratic Party will remain “a big tent” that, in Wyoming, has a lot of available seats.
Disappearing Democrats
Democrats in Wyoming have traditionally been associated with unions, stemming from the Union Pacific railroad and coal mining industries in Sweetwater and Campbell counties.
Now, the only places in the state where Democrats are competitive are Teton County, with its resort town of Jackson, and Albany County, which includes the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Martin said.
Wyoming’s Democrats still represent “the blue-collar values” of the state’s workers and are as conservative on many issues as Republicans, he said.
“You got to go to Laramie to find the ‘woke,’” Martin said.
And that’s another evolution in the disappearing Democrats of Wyoming.
Before the turn of the 21st century, there were two Democratic bastions in Wyoming—Rock Springs and Green River in Sweetwater County, and Gillette in Campbell County, where unionized railroad workers and miners were aligned with the Democratic Party.
Wyoming lawmakers adopted a “Right To Work” law in 1963. But a series of 1990s amendments by the Republican-controlled legislature turned the state into one of the most hostile in the nation to organized labor.
“The unions are gone,” Frank Prevedel said. “The ‘Right To Work State’ killed the Democrats in Wyoming.”
Even with unions no longer being a factor, Sweetwater County remained a Democratic stronghold until about a decade ago, Prevedel said. He noted that 10 years ago, there were about 7,500 registered Democrats and about 4,500 registered Republicans in the county.
Now, the county is home to about 8,000 registered Republicans and 4,500 registered Democrats, he said.
The already outmatched party began losing members not in response to issues within the state, but because of the Democrats’ national platforms that grew too liberal for many in Wyoming, according to Prevedel.
“I think two issues have converged to really hurt Democrats in Wyoming—gun control and the fight about coal,” he said, noting that he knows many who left over the gun issue, which was never the view of Wyoming Democrats—many being gun-owners themselves in a state of gun-owners.
But shifts come and go over time, and if the Democratic Party swung too far to the left for many Democrats, then the Republican Party appears to now be swinging far to the right, Kuhlmann said.
News (5)
New CDC covid guidance agency "admitted" it was wrong to downplay natural immunity and promote asymptomatic testing
Reporters : Zachari Stieber etal., The Epoch Times PREMIUM
The new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 guidance agency acknowledges it was wrong in the past to downplay natural immunity and promote unprecedented policies like asymptomatic testing, a California epidemiologist says.
The new guidance, released on 11 August 2022, rescinds and alters a number of key recommendations, including treating unvaccinated and vaccinated people differently for many purposes, explicitly stating that people with previous infection have protection against severe illness, and removing six-foot social distancing advice.
“The CDC is admitting it was wrong here, although they won’t put it in those words,” Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, told The Epoch Times.
“What they’ll say is that, well, ‘the population is more immunized now, has more natural immunity now, and now is the time—the science has changed.'”
But a large percentage of the U.S. population has had natural immunity, or protection from prior infection, Bhattacharya noted, while over 80 percent of the elderly population had protection from severe disease from COVID-19 vaccines, previous infection, or both, since 2021.
“This is two years too late, but it’s a good step,” Bhattacharya added.
CDC statement
The CDC, which did not respond to a request for comment, portrayed the change as streamlining previous guidance, with the adjustments stemming from more people being vaccinated and more COVID-19 treatments available.
“We’re in a stronger place today as a nation, with more tools—like vaccination, boosters, and treatments—to protect ourselves, and our communities, from severe illness from COVID-19,” Greta Massetti, the CDC author of the new guidance, said in a statement. “We also have a better understanding of how to protect people from being exposed to the virus, like wearing high-quality masks, testing, and improved ventilation. This guidance acknowledges that the pandemic is not over, but also helps us move to a point where COVID-19 no longer severely disrupts our daily lives.”
Dr. Jerome Adams, the surgeon general during the Trump administration, echoed the line of thinking.
“The fact that @CDCgov is changing guidance shouldn’t be taken as proof that they were necessarily ‘wrong,’ on a particular issue. The virus has changed, our tools and immunity have changed, and our knowledge has changed. So too must our guidance. That’s how science works,” Adams wrote on Twitter.
Vaccination numbers have fallen off in recent months, with little change among adults and little update among children, even after the vaccines were authorized and recommended for kids as young as 6 months old.
No new treatments have been authorized since December 2021, and a number of the treatments have been shown as less effective against newer strains of the virus that causes COVID-19, as have the vaccines and, in some cases, natural immunity.
Nearly half of the 20 papers and briefs cited by the CDC in support of the adjusted guidance were published in 2020 or 2021, while a number of others were released in early 2022.
No mandates rescinded yet
Among the most significant changes in the guidance: a rollback of recommendations for asymptomatic testing for individuals exposed to COVID-19, loosening guidance related to tracing contacts of COVID-19 cases, and ending quarantine recommendations for people exposed to a positive case.
Some rules are stricter for high-risk settings such as nursing homes.
Masking is also recommended for 10 days for people who were exposed to COVID-19, including when a person is at home around others.
Bhattacharya, who co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration in 2020, a document that called for focused protection on the elderly and fewer restrictions on others, said that the guidance is closely aligned with the principles outlined in the declaration.
Based on the new guidance, the CDC should immediately rescind the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for foreign travelers entering The United States, a policy imposed in November 2021, the professor added.
The CDC’s webpage describing the mandate says that the agency “is reviewing this page to align with updated guidance.” The U.S. government has not adjusted or rescinded any of its vaccine mandates since the guidance was changed.
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