My Aug. 22 column earlier this week presented examples demonstrating that the Washington swamp is feverishly determined to do everything possible to legally disqualify former President Donald Trump from running again ... the raid for materials in his private Mar-a-Lago residence representing a most recent episode.
Substantial conservative media speculation has suggested that the purpose of this unprecedented invasion was a scavenger sweep for any materials that can possibly tie Trump actions to the Jan. 6 Capitol riots ... the goal of ongoing Democrat sham show trials.
An extensively sourced Aug. 20 Epoch Times article by Jeff Carlson argues a different key purpose behind that invasion, namely to counter Trump's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) suits against Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and former FBI officials like former Director James Comey, former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former agent Peter Strzok, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, and other "Russiagate" and "Spygate" hoax defendants.
The DOJ's coordinated FBI Aug. 8 raid of Mar-a-Lago was likely related to preventing the unsealing and public presentation of this information.
I'll re-summarize Jeff's chronicling of evolutionary development timelines and urge you to judge for yourself.
Prior to leaving office, former President Trump executed his rightful authority to declassify many materials, including those related to now proven Crossfire Hurricane FBI spying on his administration and Russia collusion disinformation used to harass him and his associates leading up to and throughout his term of office which I previously discussed.
An Aug. 17 article from Newsweek quoting sources within the intelligence community noted that the true target was to seize a private stash of documents amassed by Trump "which Justice Department officials feared Trump might weaponize," intelligence documents that he had been collecting "since early in his administration."
These documents included "material that Trump apparently thought would exonerate him of any claims of Russian collusion in 2016 or any other election-related charges."
On January 19, 2021, then-President Trump declassified "a binder of materials specifically related to the FBI's secret Crossfire Hurricane investigation against him, although in doing so, he accepted some "redactions proposed for continued classification by the FBI."
Whereas the DOJ was then aware of and had reviewed all declassified documents in the binder, we now know that Attorney General Merrick Garland's DOJ has to date "failed to declassify a single page" of those documents.
According to a Feb. 7 statement by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), NARA arranged for the transport of 15 boxes that contained presidential records from Mar-a-Lago, "following discussions with President Trump's representatives in 2021."
Trump reportedly characterized the discussions as "collaborative and respectful," stating that it was a "great honor" to work with NARA. In addition, his representatives also told the agency they would continue to look for more presidential records.
On Feb. 15, Sens. Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., sent a letter to AG Garland stating that the DOJ had thus far refused to comply with a single page of Trump's January 2021 declassification directive and requesting that the DOJ "identify the records subject to the declassification order and, second, produce those records to Congress and the American people without improper redactions."
Meanwhile, during this period, Trump was in the process of compiling his original RICO suit that was filed on March 24 which stated that "the Defendants maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative" that he was "colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty" namely Russia.
On June 3rd, FBI agents went to Mar-a-Lago, where Jay Bratt, the top counterintelligence official at the DOJ's national security division, "personally inspected the storage facility while interacting with both Trump and one of his lawyers."
The agents left with some of the documents, and a Trump lawyer complied with requests by Bratt to see surveillance footage at the facility and provide increased security at the facility.
This sequence of events demonstrates the DOJ and FBI either knew, or had a very good idea of, what they were seizing in their Aug. 8 raid, thereby making some of the claimed national security endangerment leaks made to the media implausible.
On June 21, Trump filed an amended RICO suit against Clinton and a large number of other DNC-related individuals who were involved in the Russiagate hoax which was significantly more robust and detailed than his original March 24 RICO suit, and included additional defendants.
The following day, on June 22, Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart suddenly recused himself from Trump's RICO suit against Clinton. Then, just 44 days later, he personally signed the search warrant to raid Mar-a-Lago.
On July 14 in a motion put forth by Juan Gonzalez, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, it was requested by the DOJ that "the United States shall be substituted as the party defendant."
In other words, the DOJ wanted to substitute itself as the defendant for James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and Kevin Clinesmith.
The motion also requested that if the substitution was accepted, "the Court should dismiss the United States for lack of subject matter jurisdiction."
On July 22, trial judge Donald Middlebrooks granted the motion to substitute the United States as the defendant, bringing forth all the legal weight and firepower of the government in fighting Trump's RICO suits.
Shortly thereafter, on Aug. 4, Trump filed in opposition to Judge Middlebrook's ruling to substitute the United States.
Trump also filed another in opposition to Clinton's earlier motion to dismiss the entirety of the RICO complaint against her and her fellow defendants.
Included are the DNC, and familiar names such as lawyers Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., former journalist Glenn Simpson, and former DOJ official Bruce Ohr and his wife, Nellie, connected with concocting the Trump-Russia collusion fiction.
The very next day, Aug. 5, Magistrate Judge Reinhart signed the extremely broad, unfocussed FBI search warrant for Trump's Mar-a-Lago property which AG Garland later stated in his press conference that he personally approved.
Trump's Mar-a-Lago property was raided three days later, on Aug. 8.
They likely knew exactly what they wanted, but intentionally didn't want to say what or why.
As Epoch Times journalist Carlson concludes: "It was a targeted fishing expedition — designed to capture any and all information relating to the RussiaGate hoax — at the exact time the DOJ is defending their actions taken in the RussiaGate hoax in court against Trump's RICO case."
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.