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August 17, 2022
The recent Mar-a-Lago raid will go down in history as one of the more egregious violations of any individual’s constitutional protections. Objective future historians will view this as an outrageous abuse of the tradition that former presidents be treated with the decorum due their office. This document seizure, conducted under false pretenses, is unprecedented.
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Only two other presidents have ever faced impeachment: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. Both were believed by the then-majority party in the House to have committed “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Yet neither of these men was convicted, nor afterward subject to inappropriate searches and seizures.
This is why this absurd violation of Trump is unprecedented — a word meaning “it’s never happened before.” The U.S. attorney general (A.G.), the FBI, and the federal Judiciary have all done themselves and our country irreversible harm. Absent a Supreme Court ruling, legal precedents like this, once established, have a nasty way of remaining precedents.
In the future, any A.G., with the complicity of the FBI and just one federal judge, will be permitted to do the same thing to anyone, all in the name of whatever faux reason they can “trump up.”
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However, Trump has a constitutional option to overturn this outrageous search. Any fair court must recognize that this search was “permitted” by a bogus warrant, issued by a radical Obama judicial appointee, U.S. Magistrate Bruce Reinhart, based on counter-factual information from a single unreliable “insider.”
This judge previously represented men involved with the Jeffrey Epstein pedophilia sex ring. Before becoming a judge, Reinhart financially supported far-left Democrats. Even left-leaning USA Today reported, “In response to Reinhart’s newfound notoriety, his biography and contact information have been removed from the website of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.”
If this smells to you like a cover-up, you aren’t wrong.
If Trump is going to get justice, he’ll need to do so through higher courts, ultimately leading him to the Supreme Court.
What are the grounds for the court to overturn the warrant, disallowing all “information” seized? Trump has three claims under the Bill of Rights, under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.
The Fourth Amendment offers two protections for President Trump. Here’s what the Fourth Amendment says: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated[.]”
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Whenever an action, such as a search and a seizure, is considered “unprecedented” — another way of saying it’s never happened before — it’s reasonable to argue that “unprecedented” is another word for “unreasonable.” Can anyone — absent hyper-partisan anti-Trumpers — honestly contend that the action against Trump’s home and records was reasonable?
Of course not, for several reasons. First, Trump’s been in negotiations with the National Archives over records in the president’s possession. These are destined for the Trump Presidential Library, regardless of who controls them. As quoted on the Trump Library’s website, “The Trump Presidential Library is part of the Presidential Libraries system administered by the National Archives and Records Administration, a federal agency.” The two parties have been trying to negotiate who will actually secure key documents until they can be placed, securely, within the presidential library.
Could anything be more “Washington”?
Or it would be “Washington” if they’d continued to use such tools as subpoenas to force compliance. But Biden’s A.G. chose to weaponize a highly partisan federal judge to sign off on the FBI’s request for a warrant. The FBI has been politicized since 2016, swearing oaths before a FISA judge to obtain court orders for bugging Trump Tower, based on the now-debunked Steele Dossier. Similar hijinks in 2020 may have influenced Trump’s electoral margins in key states.
The Fourth Amendment also decrees that “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
To date, no mention of what was seized — beyond “a dozen boxes” of…something. Further, the warrant was not presented to Trump’s attorney on site. She was allowed to review it briefly, but not to keep a copy. Nor was that attorney permitted to observe the FBI during the search. Those are two serious violations of procedure. Instead of describing the place to be searched, an FBI agent said the search warrant gave them “full access to everything.”
This is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, allowing them — they said — to “scour Melania Trump’s wardrobe” in the Trumps’ master bedroom.
Anti-Trumpers are gloating. Even if no evidence of a Trump documentary cover-up proves true, the FBI can use anything they find as evidence in unrelated actions against Trump. However, if the warrant is ruled unjustified by the Supreme Court, anything the FBI seized would be considered “fruit of a poisoned tree.” It could then not be used as evidence in any criminal case.
To date, nobody other than the FBI and the A.G. know what’s been seized. FBI agents ransacked Trump’s home office for almost ten hours, during which FBI agents spent significant time ransacking Melania Trump’s wardrobe. Just prurient interest? Does the FBI believe that Trump hid classified documents in her lingerie, or perhaps sewed them into designer gowns? Did this all-encompassing warrant really give them the right to plunder her clothing?
What triggered all this? In press coverage on January 20, Trump was seen taking one box of…something…out of the White House, making way for Biden. To date, Trump’s already voluntarily turned over 15 document boxes to the National Archives. Then the FBI seized another dozen. This rivals the “miracle of the loaves and fishes,” or maybe it’s just “New Math,” Washington style.
The president is also protected by the Fifth Amendment. The Fifth Amendment says: “No person … shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself[.]” There’s another Fifth Amendment clause directly applicable to this FBI search: “nor shall any person be subject for the same offence be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb[.]”
This latter clause protects us from double jeopardy. Constitutionally, you can’t be tried twice for the same crime. Once found not guilty, the government cannot come back and nail you a second time.
Why is this clause in the Fifth Amendment applicable to President Trump? Simple. As the left-wing news media are reporting, this search is not really about National Archives rules. That’s a fig-leaf excuse permitting the FBI to claim a bogus national security excuse for the search and seizure of we know not what.
These obscure regulations have never been treated as criminal violations. Instead, as the mainstream media claim, this seizure will find proof of Trump’s complicity in the January 6, 2021 “insurrection.”
Recall that President Trump was impeached for his supposed role in the that odd event at the Capitol Building. That impeachment farce was held between January 6 and 20, even though, at noon on the 20th, Trump officially and constitutionally stepped aside as president.
Despite the fact that an impeachment is a trial taking place in Congress instead of the courts, nothing in the Constitution says a failed impeachment does not provide double jeopardy protection. If this is the real reason for the warrant and search, if what’s been seized will be used to prosecute President Trump once again, the courts will have to throw it out.
There is no vagueness in the Fifth Amendment. In fact, neither the Fourth nor the Fifth Amendment is vague about the rights of any American to be protected from unjustified searches and seizures, leading to criminal prosecution.
While the nation reels from this outrage, and while Melania Trump arranges for her clothes to be fumigated for “bugs,” Trump’s legal team is determining how those sacred rights enshrined in our Constitution will be used to protect President Trump.
The ultimate outcome, should a Republican gain the presidency in 2024, needs to be a major shake-up in both the Department of Justice and the FBI. For too long have these two vital arms of our government been taking orders from the Dark State. It’s time for some sunlight disinfectant.
Ned Barnett has been active in Washington for decades. For a dozen years, he served as a grassroots lobbyist supporting conservative health care reform of an overregulated system, and, representing a coalition of 34 anti–teen drug non-profits, he consulted with the drug czar in implementing a five-year, five-billion-dollar campaign to keep kids off drugs. His efforts brought private-sector support from American businesses. More recently, Barnett — the author of 40 published books, with four more in active development — has supported publishing and book promotion and marketing. Barnett can be reached at 702-561-1167 or [email protected].
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
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