“The former chief of the Justice Department’s national security division said Tuesday that the search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Fla., suggests that the former president could be charged with violating the World War I-era Espionage Act,” Yahoo News reports. That law has traditionally been used to target government leakers, such as former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. But Mary McCord said it also “actually has provisions that apply to essentially the mishandling of classified material through gross negligence, permitting documents to be removed from their proper place, or to be lost, stolen or destroyed.”
“Federal agents removed about a dozen boxes of materials from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and issued a warrant indicating the search pertained to possible violations surrounding classified information and the Presidential Records Act,” Politico reports
Adam Serwer: “The merits of a potential government case against Donald Trump, and of the basis for the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, cannot yet be evaluated, despite the assertions of many of Trump’s supporters and critics. A federal search warrant can be obtained only with probable cause and with the approval of a federal magistrate, but that does not mean that Trump is guilty of whatever alleged crime the FBI is investigating. Nor does the fact that Trump may be guilty of criminal conduct in other contexts mean that he is guilty here.” “But at the same time, the reflexive Republican insistence that the investigation is politically motivated is itself unmoored from the available evidence.”
Steve Benen: “If there was one thing Republicans cared about six years ago, it was how high-ranking officials dealt with classified materials. In fact, as recently as 2016, the GOP was certain — that is, the party at least pretended to be certain — that politicians disqualify themselves from positions of authority when they put documents at risk.” “And so, now that Republicans have learned that Donald Trump allegedly took highly sensitive classified materials to his golf resort, one could imagine the party expressing outrage with the former president. After all, given the GOP’s recent history of passionate feelings on the subject, it stands to reason that Trump may have crossed an intolerable line.” “But that would assume that the Republican Party’s principles and standards are consistent. They are not.”
Florida Federal Magistrate Bruce Reinhart who approved FBI RAID at Trump's home and represented several Epstein Associates after leaving US attorney's office in 2008 was appointed by DONALD TRUMP in 2018.
That should read as ''Florida Federal Magistrate Bruce Reinhart who approved the FBI RAID at Trump's home was appointed by no other than DONALD (I want loyalty) TRUMP in 2018.