What was the FBI actually looking for?

According to people familiar with the investigation the FBI did NOT raid the former president's home looking for sensitive nuclear secrets hidden in a former Slovene-American model's closet.

Aug 12, 2022

The Department of Justice ‘leak’ to The Washington Post claiming the purpose of the FBI RAID on the former president’s home was to protect our nation’s most sensitive nuclear secrets is a lie - plain and simple. The true purpose, according to people familiar with the investigation, was the seizure of the Crossfire Hurricane Binders.

The DOJ and the FBI do not want the evidence of their malfeasance outlined in those binders to ever become public. According to people familiar with the investigation, Attorney General Merrick Garland believed that if the DOJ revealed its true objective (to seize the binders preventing their release) the former president would release them to the public or at the very least make another copy. Garland believed the only way he could prevent the release of the Crossfire Hurricane binders was an FBI Raid.

WARRANT FBI RAID

The DOJ and FBI began facing unprecedented public backlash for their decision to raid the Mar-a-Lago estate of the presumptive GOP nominee for president in 2024 as soon as Trump announced the raid on his Truth Social account. Trump supporters waiving flags gathered in front of the former president’s home as pundits took to the airwaves to denounce the raid as a dangerous attack on democracy. Even high-profile Democrats including Andrew Cuomo and Andrew Yang criticized the raid as an unwarranted political attack.

Washington Post reporters Devlin Barrett and Perry Stein seemed to be jumping on the bandwagon asking why Attorney General Merrick Garland personally authorized the search of Trump’s home and published a forgettable story on Thursday afternoon titled, “Justice Department Seeks to Unseal Motion for Search Warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.”1 By this morning Josh Dawsey and Shane Harris joined Devlin Barrett and Perry Stein on the byline updating the original story’s headline to, “FBI Searched Trump’s Home to Look for Nuclear Documents and Other Items Sources Say.”2

Suddenly a sleepy story became a bombshell headline as a result of an anonymous DOJ source known only to Devlin Barrett and Perry Stein. Scores of other reporters, relying on Barrett and Stein’s anonymous source have written their own versions of the claim in a hilariously dangerous game of telephone. In this footnote,3 you find just a few of the stories that will reinforce the belief among the American people that the former president was hiding nuclear secrets - possibly to build his own nuclear arsenal.

As evidenced by the Attorney General’s unprecedented press conference yesterday the Department of Justice was feeling the heat and knew it had to justify the raid on the former president. The press conference backfired merely creating more questions in the minds of the American people. It was likely at this point that someone at the DOJ authorized the leak of the ‘nuclear secrets’ story to The Washington Post. Cloaking the raid in ‘nuclear secrets’ would mean that the DOJ would never have to come clean. So what did Attorney General Merrick Garland want? What was so important that it justified a historically unprecedented raid on the presumptive GOP nominee for president in 2024?

Two words: CROSSFIRE HURRICANE

One hundred days before the 2016 presidential election a small group of FBI agents was tasked with opening an investigation into President Trump's collusion with Vladimir Putin as outlined in the Steele Dossier. Peter Strzok, an FBI agent who grew up in Iran attending the Tehran American School and a HUGE Rolling Stones fan, suggested naming the investigation Crossfire Hurricane after a line in the Stones’ 1968 hit Jump’in Jack Flash. Strzok famously texted Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe on August 15th, 2016 that while he didn’t think Trump would get elected the investigation would serve as an insurance policy:

“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way he gets elected, but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”

On his last full day in office4, President Trump publicly declassified a binder prepared for him by the Department of Justice that included evidence of DOJ and FBI malfeasance that was previously withheld from Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s investigation into the Crossfire Hurricane scandal. When the DOJ and FBI were clear the president was going to declassify the binder they proposed various redactions - all of which were accepted by the president before he formally declassified the binder.5

White House Aides Removing Crossfire Hurricane Binders From the White House.

Reportedly, the ‘binder’ was actually several binders placed in multiple cardboard banker boxes that were transported with the president to his Mar-a-Lago estate on January 20th.

Despite the fact that the DOJ and FBI had previously redacted their ‘sources and methods’ from the binder(s) and returned the materials to the president for declassification, at the last minute the DOJ made one final effort to prevent their release. According to people familiar with the investigation, a DOJ lawyer was dispatched to meet with Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, and warn him that releasing the binder would violate the 1974 Privacy Act requirement that agencies releasing records hide ALL personal or identifiable name-information. The lawyer made it clear that if Meadows didn’t return the binder and allow the DOJ and FBI to make additional Privacy Act redactions he would be prosecuted.

The White House Legal Counsel told Meadows that the Privacy Act didn’t apply to the president but Meadows decided, out of an abundance of caution for his personal freedom, that he would return the binder with a memo demanding the expeditious release once the DOJ and FBI finished their redactions - presumably in 3-4 days.6 It has been nineteen months since Trump declassified the binder and yet the DOJ refuses to release it despite demands from Senators Grassley and Johnson7 and even a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch on August 1st.

According to people familiar with the investigation, there have been multiple high-level discussions between Susan Rice, Christopher Wray, and Merrick Garland concerning the fact that former President Trump retained a complete and unredacted copy of the binder. A binder that, if released, could seriously impact the Democratic Party’s chances in the midterms or even the 2024 general election. Susan Rice argued that the version of the binder Trump declassified was the redacted copy and technically the version in Trump’s possession was NEVER declassified making the former president guilty of violating U.S. Code Title 18, Section 2071. The White House demanded that Garland enforce the law and protect the nation’s secrets by seizing the binders.

The Crossfire binders reportedly include a treasure trove of damning information that would embarrass the DOJ and FBI at further undermine their credibility:

copies of each FISA warrant against Trump and his campaign
transcripts of FBI intercepts of Trump’s family & staff
contracts, instructions, and debriefings of Chris Steele & Stefan Halper
dossier of Fiona Hill’s collusion with Russian & Ukrainian intel services
communications between Victoria Nuland Glenn Simpson
documents related to Fusion GPS’s payments to former FSB and GRU officers
Democratic National Committee invoices from a foreign national

According to people familiar with the investigation, once the decision had been made that the Binders had to be seized. Garland knew the ONLY option was a clandestine raid of Trump’s estate - preferably when the president wasn’t home. Garland was convinced that if the Department of Justice revealed their actual target was the Crossfire Hurricane Binders the president would take steps to secure a copy of the documents making their seizure moot.

PRESIDENTIAL WARRANT

Sean Davis @seanmdav

Under "Attachment B" of the FBI raid document, Garland demanded the seizure of literally any record Trump ever saw, read, or created over the entire 4-year term of his presidency: "Any government and/or Presidential Records created between January 20, 2017, and January 20, 2021."

🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 @mrddmia

Again, the classification statutes/regulations *do not apply* to the President of the United States. He has the inherent constitutional power, as commander-in-chief, to classify and declassify anything he wants, in any manner he wants. The Supreme Court reaffirmed this in 1987.

🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 @mrddmia

In 1987, the Supreme Court (again) made clear the President has constitutional power, as commander-in-chief, to classify and declassify. Regardless of any statute passed by Congress. Did AG Merrick Garland obtain an OLC opinion before ordering his illegal Trump raid? Why not? https://t.co/falznetyDP

So no… Trump wasn’t building his own nuclear arsenal at Mar-a-Lago. The only question that remains is whether or not Trump gave a copy of the binders to anyone else. If he didn’t the American people will never know the truth about Crossfire Hurricane…

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https://web.archive.org/web/20220811192709/https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/11/garland-trump-mar-a-lago/

https://web.archive.org/web/20220812123533/https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/11/garland-trump-mar-a-lago/

Matt Novak / Gizmodo: The 9 Dumbest Defenses for Trump Keeping Nuclear Secrets at Mar-a-Lago

Joseph MacKinnon / 'TheBlaze': Washington Post anonymous sources: FBI raided former President Trump's residence in search of nuclear weapon documents. Trump: ‘Hoax.’

Susan Bagwell / The Racket News: Treason is afoot — What is the difference between sedition and treason, Trump’s theft of nuclear secrets is worse.

NewsNation: FBI agents found dozens of nuclear weapon-related classified documents in Mar-a-Lago search

Misty Severi / Washington Examiner: FBI agents in Trump Mar-a-Lago raid sought nuclear weapons documents: Report

Jon Dougherty / Conservative Brief: Claim: FBI Searched Trump's Residence Looking For ‘Top Secret’ Documents On ‘Nuclear Weapons’

Chibueze Godwin / 'National Memo': Report: FBI Searched Classified Nuclear Weapons Documents At Mar-a-Lago

Terresa Monroe-Hamilton / BizPac Review: ‘Release the documents now!’ Trump reacts to Garland presser, as leaks say FBI was looking for classified nuclear documents

Jake Johnson / Common Dreams: In Raid of Trump Home, FBI Was Seeking Classified Nuclear Weapons Documents