The New York Times is prepping the terrain for another FBI raid of Donald Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago for missing documents that the Department of Justice is apparently seeking.
“A top Justice Department official told former President Donald J. Trump’s lawyers in recent weeks that the department believed he had not returned all the documents he took when he left the White House, according to two people briefed on the matter,” the Times reported on Thursday night.
“The outreach from the official, Jay I. Bratt, who leads the department’s counterintelligence operations, is the most concrete indication yet that investigators remain skeptical that Mr. Trump has been fully cooperative in their efforts to recover documents the former president was supposed to have turned over to the National Archives at the end of his term,” the report added.
“It is not clear what steps the Justice Department might take to retrieve any material it thinks Mr. Trump still holds,” the report noted. “And it is not known whether the Justice Department has gathered new evidence that Mr. Trump has held onto government material even after the court-authorized search in August of his private club and residence in Florida, Mar-a-Lago, and 18 months of previous efforts by the federal government to convince the former president to return what he had taken on leaving office.”
This is clearly laying the groundwork for a potential second FBI raid to find the purported ‘missing documents.’ And it is no coincidence that Jay Bratt played a key role in the failed Mueller witch hunt.
“Sources told RealClearInvestigations that Jay Bratt, the top counterintelligence official in Justice’s national security division, who happens to be a Democratic National Committee donor, has been coordinating the Mar-a-Lago investigation with Alan Kohler, who heads the FBI’s counterintelligence division,” Sperry adds.
The critical thing to note about Bratt is that he was a “resource of the Mueller investigation and worked directly with Andrew Weissman.” Russiagate followers will recall Andrew Weissman, nicknamed as ‘Mueller’s pit bull.”
On Wednesday, a “sealed” list of Trump’s documents that were seized in the FBI’s raid at Mar-a-Lago was accidentally leaked from the docket and temporarily made publicly available.
It contains a list of documents reviewed and segregated by the filter review team. There are some interesting items here.
These documents include:
- Draft 2019 immigration initiative
- Congressional clemency request for “RN”
- Senate clemency request for “RN”
- Printed email between Head Baseball Coach at U.S Air Force Academy and White House
- Unsigned letter from Kasowitz Benson & Torress to Robert Mueller dated 6/23/2017
- Document titled “Executive Action to Curb Illegal Immigration and Move Towards Merit-Based Entry” (2 copies)
- Printed email between White House and National Security Council regarding John Walker Lindh’s release
- Letter to President regarding Ted Suhl clemency and Ted Suhl commutation internal analysis (2 copies)
- Publicly filed letter to judge regarding Rod Blagojevich clemency
- Publicly filed letter to Congress regarding Rod Blagojevich clemency
- Internal pardon package for “IR” and “JC”
- Internal pardon package for “MB”
- Printed email from Charles Harder to New York Times
- Document titled ‘Meeting Requests for Your Approval”; post-it note “For POTUS Review”
- Document titled “Molly’s Questions for POTUS Approval”
- Printed email dated 12/31/2020 from Kurt Hilbert in White House email account regarding signed verifications for Fulton County lawsuit and federal complaint and three verifications
- Printed email dated 12/31/2020 from Kurt Hilbert to White House email account sharing 10 files regarding federal lawsuit
- Contents of red folder marked “NARA letters & other copies”
- Contents of manila folder marked “NARA letters one top sheet + 3 signing sheets”
- 35 pages, each titled “The President’s Calls” with the Presidential Seal in the upper corner, containing handwritten names, numbers, and [blank]
Then there is a final item: Miscellaneous handwritten notes, including a “Message from Rudy.”
“The thousands of documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s Florida home included a mix of government, business and personal affairs, including analysis about who should get a pardon, call notes marked with a presidential seal, retainer agreements for lawyers and accountants, and legal bills, according to newly disclosed logs created by federal investigators,” Bloomberg summarized.
No nuclear secrets were listed among the documents. This looks like a desperate move to cover the FBI’s backside for not delivering the goods that were promised ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
You can now call this the “Nuclear Secrets Hoax.”
Current Founder, CEO and Chief Editor of Becker News. Former Writer & Associate Producer at Fox News for #1 top-rated prime-time cable news show. Former Director of Viral Media and Senior Managing Editor for award-winning startup website IJReview, which grew to a readership of 20-30 million Americans a month. Led editorial and social media team that was #1 ranked news & politics publisher on Facebook for story engagement. Writer whose thousands of digital articles have been read by over 100 million unique users.