Precedent
“Precedent refers to a court decision that is considered as authority for deciding subsequent cases involving identical or similar facts, or similar legal issues. Precedent is incorporated into the doctrine of stare decisis and requires courts to apply the law in the same manner to cases with the same facts. Some judges have stated that precedent ensures that individuals in similar situations are treated alike instead of based on a particular judge’s personal views.
If the facts or issues of a case differ from those in a previous case, the previous case cannot be precedent. The Supreme Court in Cooper Industries, Inc. v. Aviall Services, Inc. reiterated that “[q]uestions which merely lurk on the record, neither brought to the attention of the court nor ruled upon, are not to be considered as . . . precedent.” Therefore, a prior decision serves as precedent only for issues, given the particular facts, that the court explicitly considered in reaching its decision.”
The Raid.
On the morning of August 8th, 2022, Mar-a-Lago, the residence of President Donald J. Trump, sometimes called the “Winter White House,” was raided by a team of FBI agents executing at least one search warrant (and possibly more than one).
We first learned of this raid from President Trump himself.
Less than six hours later, President Trump posted this video on Truth Social.
It’s noteworthy that it was Trump himself who informed us of the raid. There were no leaks to the media ahead of time nor during the execution of the warrant, and by the time he posted his statement, the FBI had more or less come and gone from the property. The Corrupt Media had completely missed out on the opportunity for footage they have been lusting to get for over five years. Lulz.
On the day of the raid, Dan Scavino made this one Truth:
As the media machine spun into action, eager to write their mawkish pieces repeating the same tired, weak, abrading narrative of “tHe wAlLs aRe cLoSiNg iN,” anons going through Scavino’s posts on Truth Social noticed that he had given us a subtle heads up on the raid just 3 days prior:
The obvious nod to Trump being the 45th President on the door (in gold no less)…the less obvious nod of Trump being the future 47th President in the time stamp…and the door indicating someone was about to knock and/or open it? There are no coincidences.
We would later learn that the search warrant(s) for Mar-a-Lago had been signed by Magistrate Judge Reinhart later that same day.
The former President is quite well protected; to my knowledge he uses both private security and the Secret Service. Any “raid” of his property would HAVE to be coordinated with his security teams. No question about it. The LAST thing any involved party would want is some kind of incident between private security, Secret Service, and the FBI. So there had to have been SOME foreknowledge, and such coordination has since been confirmed, but for Scavino to post the hint with the door, before the search warrant was even signed? That really makes the mind wonder…
Magistrate Judge Reinhart also signed all of these orders on August 5th:
Two search warrants, a telephone records order, and a sealed (misspelled “Seald”) pen register order.
We do not know if all of these are related to the raid on Mar-a-Lago, but it is reasonable to keep that possibility in mind. The first one, 9:22-mj-08332, is the Mar-a-Lago raid for which we have the most documents unsealed, including the search warrant and property receipt. It is also the one that we are expecting to get a partially redacted affidavit from in the near future (provided there are not further appeals on that motion, which there likely will be).
Here are links to the dockets for anyone who wants to keep track:
United States v. Sealed Search Warrant (9:22-mj-08332)
United States v. Application and Order Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 2703 (d) re: Telephone Records (9:22-mj-08334)
United States v. Seald Pen Register (9:22-mj-08335) (still mispelled)
United States v. Sealed Search Warrant (9:22-mj-08338)
The last search warrant, Case 9:22-mj-08338, is still restricted as of this writing, but check out the activity on the docket and the parties:
All of it is restricted/sealed for now, and the judge ruled to keep it that way. One difference between this case and the one that is known to be about Mar-a-Lago is that they are out of two different US Attorney’s Offices, but both went across Judge Reinhart’s desk on August 5th.
Like I said, we do not know if this case is related to the Mar-a-Lago raid, but it’s worth watching to see if it is.
15 Boxes.
The New York Times reported this about the raid:
“The search, according to two people familiar with the investigation, appeared to be focused on material that Mr. Trump had brought with him to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence, after he left the White House. Those boxes contained many pages of classified documents, according to a person familiar with their contents.
Mr. Trump delayed returning 15 boxes of material requested by officials with the National Archives for many months, only doing so when there became a threat of action being taken to retrieve them.” Source
Wait. Are these some of the same boxes and documents that we have been hearing about since at least last fall? The ones related to January 6th? The ones Biden did not assert executive privilege over?
So whatever happened to these boxes and documents? Well, here is what the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) had to say in regard to them earlier this year:
As the above statement says and as you may remember, these “15 boxes of documents and items,” which we keep hearing about, were already recovered from Mar-A-Lago on February 7th of this year, by the National Archives themselves and without the use of the FBI or any other agency.
Accusations of improper handling of classified material made the rounds for months, and still do, despite Kash Patel’s phone interview with Breitbart News, which clears all of that up.
Some key quotes from the article:
‘“Trump declassified whole sets of materials in anticipation of leaving government that he thought the American public should have the right to read themselves”
“The White House counsel failed to generate the paperwork to change the classification markings, but that doesn’t mean the information wasn’t declassified,” Patel said. “I was there with President Trump when he said ‘We are declassifying this information.'”
“The story says the National Archives found the documents had classification markings on them. That doesn’t mean that they were not declassified. All previously classified documents have classification markings on them, it shows they used to be classified. It’s petty bureaucracy at its finest, government simpletons not following a president’s orders to have them marked ‘declassified.’ The president has unilateral authority to declassify documents — anything in government. He exercised it here in full,” he said.
“[For] NBC to make a leap to say, ‘Well that means he released classified information,’ is completely false,” Patel said. “So I think the article is entirely misleading.”
Patel said he does not believe NARA spoke to anyone at the Trump White House to see if the documents were declassified, and now they will not release the documents to the American public as Trump had intended.
“They are not a classification authority. I don’t believe they have unilateral authority to reclassify something the president declassified. They are the holder of records,” he said.
Patel did not want to get into what the specific documents were, predicting claims from the left that he was disclosing “classified” material, but said, “It’s information that Trump felt spoke to matters regarding everything from Russiagate to the Ukraine impeachment fiasco to major national security matters of great public importance — anything the president felt the American people had a right to know is in there and more.”’
All of this stuff has already been declassified. Period. The NYT article I linked earlier in this stack, as well as many other corrupt media articles, are factually incorrect in writing that these boxes contained still-classified material. Some documents may have still had their classified markings not yet marked as declassified, but that is a clerical issue, not a statutory one.
So just what is actually going on here?
Perhaps a clue is found in the most recent statement from the National Archives.
Four days after the Mar-A-Lago raid, they made this statement:
So NARA has exclusive custody of Obama-era records: the unclassified docs are in Chicago, the classified docs are in DC. That is very interesting.
I think this is important information to remember for the future.
For more on Obama’s fight with NARA, read this substack piece.
Back to the Mara-A-Lago Raid
Let’s take a look at the search warrant and the property receipt which were unsealed on or about August 12th. It is specifically for the premises of Mar-a-Lago, not a person. The search is restricted to rooms in use by FPOTUS (Former President of The United States),
“45 Office.” See that?
Now recall the Dan Scavino Truth which was sent almost a full 12 HOURS before this document was even signed!
No coincidences.
How did Dan know?
Well, Dan knew because Trump knew.
How did Trump know?
I suspect because he, in large part, set this whole thing up. In order to set a precedent.
Back to the unsealed search warrant…
Here we have the potential violations that the still-sealed (as of this writing) affidavit must speak to:
18 U.S. Code § 793 is the Espionage Act.
18 U.S. Code § 2071 18 U.S. Code § 2071 - Concealment, removal, or mutilation of records/documents/items belonging to a clerk or official of the US Governmentt.
18 U.S. Code § 1519 - Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy.
The statutes regarding classification do not apply to the President as he has the power to declassify whatever he wishes and to do so simply by saying so. He can even do so with a simple Truth or a Tweet!
He can also issue broad declassification authorizations such as he did in this Tweet:
(h/t: TheStormHasArrived on Truth Social for reminding me of these tweets)
The media is pretending that this isn’t the case, that Presidents can’t do these things, but ignore them. Instead, let’s ask some questions:
Can you imagine President Trump violating ANY of these statutes?
I cannot.
Can you imagine any of President Trump’s enemies violating these statutes?
Oh, I can easily imagine that. I’m pretty damn sure they did violate these statutes and more.
If Trump cannot and/or would not be in violation of these statutes, then who are the REAL targets of this raid?
I have some ideas.
And who would have evidence of such violations and where might such evidence be found?
Hmmm…
In the Breitbart News interview with Kash Patel, linked above in this Substack, he told us what was in these 15 boxes:
Filter Team
According to FOX News,
“A Department of Justice ‘taint’ or ‘filter’ team has been reviewing documents seized by the FBI during its raid on former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, Fox News has learned.
A senior law enforcement official familiar with the process told Fox News that the review began soon after the search warrant was executed on Aug. 8.
The official said that it is standard procedure for the Justice Department to use a ‘taint’ or ‘filter’ team to go through documents obtained during a search — in part to identify records that may be protected by attorney-client privilege.”
Here is the property receipt for what this team is reviewing, in Trump’s case against the US Gov’t, he is asking for a more detailed property receipt to be made public:
Special Master
Recently, I had the pleasure of joining my friend Patel Patriot on his Devolution Power Hour show to discuss The Pit, an election fraud-focused event put on by Gregg Phillips and Catherine Engelbrecht.
Towards the end of the interview, he asked me for my thoughts on the Mar-a-Lago Raid and I had this to offer:
The full video is here.
Well, four days later, this article drops:
Here is the docket for the case Trump has opened against the United States and the filing asking for a special master, stoppage of review by DOJ of the materials taken from Mar-a-Lago, and a more detailed property receipt to be provided:
So what is a special master?
“A "special master" is appointed by a court to carry out some sort of action on its behalf…
“Activities carried out by special masters are as diverse as the actions taken by courts.” (source)
“...a special master is generally a subordinate official appointed by a judge to make sure that judicial orders are actually followed, or in the alternative, to hear evidence on behalf of the judge and make recommendations to the judge as to the disposition of a matter.
“In the federal judiciary of the United States, a special master is an adjunct to a federal court. Rule 53 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure allows a federal court to appoint a special master, with the consent of the parties, to conduct proceedings and report to the Court.” (source)
Adding a Special Master to a case is like adding a third judge, a kind of arbiter, who looks at various proceedings of the court and/or evidence, and helps ensure that the Law is followed and that the rights of both parties are protected.
We have seen special masters used recently in some very interesting cases that I have written about before…
Such as the Rudy Giuliani raid back in May of 2021:
The news told us that Rudy was under investigation, “tHe wAlLs aRe cLoSiNg iN!” they screamed.
The walls would not close in. Instead, a “taint team” or “filter team” was used to go through Rudy’s devices, and then a special master was appointed.
As I wrote in this substack,
“There [was] no pending criminal case against the subjects of the search.”
“It doesn’t matter what the MSM writes, or what ConInc peddles to you, or how Rudy plays the victim; there was no pending criminal case. Rudy Giuliani and Victoria Toensing were not under criminal investigation—someone else was, and Rudy and Victoria had possession of items needed for that investigation. So they got searched, or raided. The difference between searched and raided seems to be how loudly the FBI knocks and at what time of day it occurs.”
Same thing happened in the Project Veritas raid. A filter team was used and a special master was appointed. (source)
And guess what? IT WAS THE SAME SPECIAL MASTER AS IN THE RUDY RAID!
Judge Barbara Jones, who also served as the special master in… drum roll…
The Michael Cohen case. Which ALSO used a filter team.
Precedents
This raid on Mar-a-Lago…the filter team, the request to appoint a special master…this is ALL such good news.
Think BIG PICTURE.
We now have precedents set for search warrants being served on:
Major Media (Project Veritas)
A President’s Former Attorney (Cohen)
A Former President’s Attorney (Rudy)
A Former President’s Residence (Mar-a-Lago)
Filter team and Special Master used in each.
It’s a TEMPLATE.
Template- a gauge, pattern, or mold; something that establishes or serves as a pattern.
A template for how to go after the Clintons, Obama, their attorneys, and the media who assisted them in their crimes against the United States and We the People.
A template for how to go after [THEM].
The FBI raids were never about "getting" Rudy or "getting PV," and this Mar-a-Lago raid is not about "getting" Trump.
Contrary to popular ConInc narratives, the FBI does indeed go after bad guys. Regularly. As a rule, even.
The corruption in the FBI is the exception. And one that is being investigated by...
Durham.
That's not to say that anti-FBI narratives are not important.
I believe they are crucially important.
Because I believe that the amount of hate the FBI is getting now is proportional to the amount of justice the FBI is going to dish out against HRC and her cohorts.
We are building up a wall around the FBI, a narrative defense, that will insulate them from future attacks when indictments against deep state politicians, corrupt media, and their cohorts are unsealed.
When Marc Elias is raided, when HRC is raided, when the NYT is raided, we will be cheering the FBI.
And we will reflect on this Mar-a-Lago raid as good news.
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Addendum: I covered this substack on Just Human episode #126.
Brilliant analysis, Kyle.
Thank You Kyle 🙏