(Tony Sifert, Headline USA) Investigative reporter Margot Cleveland of the Federalist has claimed that the FBI’s focus on “classified” documents in justifying its unprecedent raid on President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is a “red herring.”
THREAD: Search warrant & schedules has been bristling me & I finally figured out why–we are getting lost in what was taken & what was listed as susceptible to seizure & NOT the criminal provisions on which warrant was based. I'm still ruminating here, but what I see is NONE 1/
— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) August 13, 2022
According to Cleveland, the published search warrant approved by Never-Trump magistrate judge Bruce Reinhart — which cites 18 U.S.C. §§ 793 (Espionage Act), 2071 and 1519 (Obstruction of Justice) — extends so far as to include nearly every record produced by the White House.
“None of the three criminal statutes relied upon by the DOJ to justify the search required the material sought to be classified,” Cleveland reported. “Material need not be classified to fall within any of those criminal code provisions.”
Cleveland went on to argue that the failure of the DOJ and FBI to stick to classified material proves that the investigation is a “witch hunt” aided and abetted by partisan bureaucrats at the National Archives.
“Even if the documents were classified, Trump has the right to access them and NARA could have worked with the former president to set up a secure location for his presidential papers,” Cleveland wrote.
As Cleveland shows, the partisan NARA handled both Hillary Clinton‘s violation of the Federal Records act and President Barack Obama‘s removal of presidential records to Chicago “vastly differently.”
Cleveland pointed to several statements made by David S. Ferriero, who served as the 10th Archivist of the United States until April 2022.
In a May 2022 interview, Ferriero revealed his partisan leanings by declaring that Jan. 6 was “the worst day of my life.”
Ferriero also confessed that he had creepily watched the Trumps leaving the White House and had even then suspected that Trump planned to remove classified material.
“I can remember watching the Trumps leaving the White House and getting off in the helicopter that day, and someone carrying a white banker box, and saying to myself, ‘What the hell’s in that box?'” he told the Post. “That began a whole process [of investigating Trump].”
