US v. Trump [SDFL Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
Discovers, concocts ... same difference.
BREAKING: Donald Trump is lying about a thing!
He was not “shown Reports” about the supposedly “Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid.” His own lawyers filed a motion in Trump’s stolen documents case on February 22, quoting the boilerplate language which is included in the operations order for every FBI search warrant and includes generic prohibitions like “Warning shots are not permitted outside of the prison context.” They’ve had this document in their hands for upwards of six months, and only deployed it now so they could misquote it, both in and out of court, cherrypicking language about “handcuffs” and “bolt cutters” to gin up the MAGA masses.
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Here’s the language from the actual order, included as an exhibit to Trump’s motion to suppress:
Law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force only when necessary, that is, when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.
And here’s how Trump’s lawyers reported it to the court:
The Order contained a “Policy Statement” regarding “Use Of Deadly Force,” which stated, for example, “Law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary . . . .”
Here’s What The Best Ones Are Doing Differently.
If ONLY there were rules governing attorney candor before a tribunal!
OTOH, the tribunal in this case consists of Judge Aileen Cannon, so … YOLO!
The mangled quote comes in a recently unsealed “Motion for Relief Relating to the Mar-a-Lago Raid and Unlawful Piercing of Attorney-Client Privilege.” And by “unlawful,” they mean “approved by Chief Judge Beryl Howell after full briefing and hearing, with an appeal to the DC Circuit abandoned after the appeals court refused to stay the trial judge’s ruling.” The motion demands dismissal of the indictment for “the highly prejudicial nature in which the Special Counsel’s Office used the privileged evidence, including through extensive quotations in the Superseding Indictment,” and because the FBI failed to tell the magistrate judge who approved the warrant that some members of the FBI team would have preferred to request a consensual search.
It’s a document which would have been laughed out of any courtroom except the one it landed in. (Excepting the Fifth Circuit, obviously.) But knowing that their most preposterous ramblings will be accorded the utmost deference in Fort Pierce, Trump’s lawyers are attempting to suppress the judicially authorized search while supplying their client with fodder to whip up his fans with false claims that Biden sent thugs to murder him.
In reality, Trump wasn’t even in Florida, and Mar-a-Lago was closed for the season in August of 2022 when the FBI executed the warrant. But, as the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler points out, that didn’t stop wingnut media and Trump’s GOP allies from boosting the obvious lie.
“The FBI raid was designed to provoke a response. This was an assassination attempt on President Trump,” alt-right performance artist Mike Cernovich tweeted.
“Was deadly force authorized against Biden for his docs? Were they going to shoot SS then Pres Trump, Melania, and Barron too???” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green screeched on Twitter, as she demanded impeachment for Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray.
The irony is that Trump himself has endorsed just such an eventuality as very cool and very legal. When cornered by DC Circuit Judge Florence Pan with the infamous “SEAL Team Six” hypo, Trump’s lawyer D. John Sauer insisted that, absent an impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate, a president could use his office to order the assassination of his rival without repercussion.
So perhaps there’s just a whiff of hypocrisy to this entire news cycle. Along with every other one for the past eight years.