Trump raided, in part, because of law he signed to ensnare Clinton

In this week’s edition of the Election Crimes Bulletin, host
Dennis Bernstein and investigative reporter Greg Palast discuss
the recent FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. Separate
from the investigation being undertaken by the January 6th
Committee, the raid on Trump’s Florida home was done at the
request of the National Archives, who were seeking official
documents Trump had illegally removed from the White House. And
there’s a certain amount of schadenfreude to be had, knowing
Trump’s home was raided, in part, because of a law he signed to
ensnare Hillary Clinton — and to prevent her from running for
office. But though this National Archives-instigated raid puts
the former president in significant legal jeopardy, it’s a case
out of Georgia that might be more likely to deprive Trump of his
liberty — and his infamous comb-over!


 
TRANSCRIPT

Dennis Bernstein: I just wanna start off with a couple of quick
headlines here. Here’s one about the Attorney General. He had a
press conference with no conference part. Attorney General
Merrick Garland said Thursday that the Justice Department had
filed the motion to unseal a search warrant and property receipt
from the FBI’s recent search of former president Donald Trump’s
MAGA-Largo estate.


It looks like the folks who helped to take care of him are trying
to take care of him in a different way. But let me just add this
into the mix, and then I want you to comment. This is coming out
of Ohio, the armed man [Ricky Walter Shiffer] who tried to storm
the FBI’s Cincinnati office on Thursday, before getting into a
shootout with cops that left him dead in an Ohio cornfield,
appeared to be a conspiracy-addled Trump-superfan, who told his
followers on Truth Social that he was ready for combat after the
FBI raided Mar-a-Lago. He, by the way, was also guess where on in
January? Yeah, at the insurrection.


Greg, we’ve talked about the situation growing more and more
violent, and we’re seeing that happen — attacking the FBI, that’s
pretty amazing.


Greg Palast: Well, in fact, yes, actually the amount of violence,
having just come back from Georgia, it ain’t pretend. There were
guys in a film that I’m working on right now…there was a
so-called reenactment by the Civil War aficionados of the one
single battle that the rebel won outside of Atlanta, they redid
that battle. But it was interesting talking to the spectators and
re-enactors. I said, why are you here? They said, to support the
Confederate history. I said, well, isn’t that war over? And he
said, nope, the Confederacy’s not over and the South will rise
again. And then they started talking about how they’d already
picked out the high points at the peach tree hotels in downtown
Atlanta, waiting for that moment. Remember Trump’s statement to
the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by”. Well, they’re still
standing back and they’re still standing by — and they are armed
to the teeth. And this ain’t no joke.


So, yes, obviously the armed reaction to the FBI raid [is
worrying], but, let’s get into that FBI raid, ‘cause most of the
media has just simply covered it as, well, you know, the FBI, how
dare they break into… Even Pence was saying, how dare they break
it to a former president’s residence? This is unprecedented.
Well, you know, a lot of things about Trump are unprecedented.


If you take government property that isn’t yours, and he took
many boxes…they aren’t his, they belong to you and me. They are
the public’s documents. In fact, it was a guy named Donald Trump
who signed a law when he was president saying that it is a crime
for a president, or anyone who would control presidential papers,
to illegally remove those papers. And that was because, if you
remember, they were all berserko about Hillary Clinton’s emails.
And so, Trump himself, he’s being raided based on the law that he
himself signed and pushed that said, if you grab presidential
documents, if you grab official documents and bury them or
eliminate them, you go to prison. And by the way, that law has
one other piece of punishment that Trump came up with, which is
that if you get caught removing presidential papers illegally,
you can’t run for federal public office. So, this is real, real
serious for Mr. Trump. And this, again, is the law he crafted to
try to hopefully ensnare and imprison Hillary Clinton, or get her
barred from running for office again. But now it may be that he’s
the man who’s gonna get literally hoisted on his own petard —
legally.


By the way, this presidential records issue goes back to Richard
Nixon, who was very good at creating false papers, as we know.
So, before we get too excited about the wonderful FBI, they are
at the center of the fake creation of documents, the COINTELPRO
program, misused by Nixon, and that led to the 1978 Presidential
Records Act. So, what we’re talking about is a series of laws
based on abuses.


And, by the way, I do think that Hillary Clinton did abuse the
law. Come on, she didn’t know that public papers are public and
not private? Also, when they said that this has never happened
before, in fact, Hillary Clinton’s servers were seized,
ultimately by the FBI. They did check in her home in Chappaqua,
which is also the home of former president Bill Clinton. So, no,
this is not unprecedented. But, again, in that case, they were
technically looking, not for the presidential papers, but for a
potential future president and the Secretary of State. But this
is not that unusual, except that Trump is unusual.


By the way, this is nothing to do with the January 6th hearings.
This is a very separate federal grand jury that was impaneled at
the request of the National Archives, which said papers are
missing. You could tell that, ’cause I know when I work with
these federal agencies, these things are numbered and stamped.
And also, when I do investigations, you have a letter responding
to a letter, but you didn’t see the original letter? It’s very
hard to run off with the documents and bury them.


There’s real questions. because these were documents which
included national security material, which would not have
anything to do with the January 6th hearings. My curiosity has to
do with…you know, why would Trump grab the stuff? The answer
might be, and again, I’m always afraid to speculate, but I have
done these investigations…Remember, Trump was impeached over
threatening Ukraine with disarming Ukraine. Imagine if he’d
gotten away with that today. Can you imagine? Trump tried to
disarm Ukraine… and it’s quite consequential. So, that might be
in that information, because, why would he be taking national
security documents and hiding them away?


And, and let me add a few other things… We know from an informer
who got to Newsweek that it was someone very close to Trump. One
of the people close to Trump, running Mar-a-Lago, who happened to
know where all these papers were hidden. And what caused the raid
was that the FBI had actually a very positive relationship with
Trump. They had asked his lawyers, they said, listen, we
understand from the National Archives that you have boxes of
presidential documents. You can’t have those. But, before we
determine whether they are public or private documents, just lock
them up.


They actually went to Mar-a-Lago in June, so this is not new.
They went to Mar-a-Lago in June, but it was very friendly and
they just said, listen, just lock those things away and have
heavier locks than you have right now. We need to keep those
secure. But it was only when they got an informer to say they
jacked the FBI, they told you about the 15 boxes in that room,
but there are other boxes in two other rooms — in his bedroom and
in another room.


When you lie to the FBI, that creates a bit of a problem. And
that’s when they decided that they couldn’t tip him off, ’cause
obviously the sentiment was that he was telling them there’s only
15 boxes, when, in fact, he had a lot more that he was hiding —
and why. So, that’s why they had to do the raid. Though, I will
say, unusually for the FBI, they did not wear any FBI
identification and they carried no weapons. Wouldn’t you like to
have that kind of nice kid glove treatment, Dennis?


Bernstein: Yes, well…I’m gonna guess that people of color that
make up the FBI is probably about less than 1%. The FBI has a
reputation for being a racist organization. I’m sorry, I’m not
gonna feel bad about them either. And everybody knows that if it
was Black and brown people who were carrying forth with an
insurrection, there would’ve been blood everywhere and it
would’ve been the blood of Black and brown people. So we know
that there’s another story here, and it has to do with the
inability of the white FBI to deal with terrorism at the roots,
which they’ve known for decades…that it’s white.


Palast: Well, what’s interesting here is that the FBI seemed to
have been dragged into this. It’s not like the FBI were
aggressively trying to go after Trump. In fact, it was the
National Archives, which you just think of as kind of like a
fancy library. It was the National Archives which is very upset.
It’s their job to keep control of those papers. You can’t just
take off with papers. They are not yours. It’s a government of,
by and for the people. It’s not of, by, and for Donald Trump or
the Trump Organization. And that’s very, very important. These
are our documents. He stole them from us. It is a form of theft.
And it is very dangerous stuff, because we also need to know what
our government is doing. That’s why the law was passed originally
in 1978, because Richard Nixon, Tricky Dick, was very good at
either creating documents or burying them.


So, again, this was not the FBI. You can almost see when you
watched our Attorney General, Merick Garland, at his press
conference today. He almost seemed like…I wish I weren’t here.
But, again, it’s not the FBI, it was the National Archives. They
required justice to impanel a grand jury, and the grand jury made
the decision, and a Florida judge granted the warrant for the
raid. So, it’s not really even about the FBI getting tough, or
taking on Trump, or any of that. It’s, literally, that they were
forced to make this move by the courts and the National Archives.
So, bless the National Archives. You never usually think of them
as the tough guys on the street.


Bernstein: Everybody knows, still at this point in terms of
Trump, it’s what’s happening in Georgia, it’s what’s happening
through the DA which is most precise in terms of the ability to
go after Trump. Is that case proceeding a pace?


Palast: Well, interestingly, I think this National Archives
problem is a big one for Trump.


Bernstein: Oh, that’s a big one for Trump too. Absolutely.


Palast: Because he signed the law saying that if you are found
guilty, you can’t run for federal office. And so this could
actually be the killer one for him. But, in terms of actually
serving on a chain gang, that’s gonna be the Georgia District
Attorney.


Bernstein: The Georgia chain gang.


Palast: It’d be like Paul Newman in Hudor whatever film that was,
right?


Bernstein: Give that guy a sledgehammer. Make him break rocks.


Palast: What I want to know is will he be allowed to wear his red
tie? And he won’t be allowed the comb-over either.


Bernstein: Will he be allowed McDonald’s in federal prison?
McDonald’s big burger? I know you can get those at Rikers Island.


Palast: I do know that guys like Trump, if they ever do serve,
they serve in places with tennis courts. I’ve seen them.


Bernstein: Exactly.


Palast: Like there’s a so-called prison in La Jolla that I would
love. I’d be willing to pay a fair amount of money to spend a
weekend there. It has tennis courts, views the ocean. This is for
the white collar criminals, basically, to take a break. I know
one who actually, literally, signed in for the weekend.


Bernstein: [laughs] Can we have a 60 second version of what’s
happening in Atlanta?


Palast: Okay. The key thing is that you have a tough District
Attorney who is slowly building a case and it looks like it could
take down, if not Trump, a lot of people around him. Like Cleta
Mitchell, who is one of the key people behind groups like True
the Vote. You can’t remove this from the vote suppression
activity. So, she’s involved in convincing Trump, and others were
involved in convincing Trump, to have an alternative slate of
electors for the presidential vote — and that ain’t in the
Constitution. We have had Constitutional crises, there are fights
over elector slates, but he literally just pulled a bunch of
names of his cronies and said that they were voted in by the
people of Georgia. Well, I’m sorry, their names weren’t even on
the ballot. And that involves, when you do transmit that,
interestingly, again, it’s once again to the National Archives.
When you transmit your list of electors to the National Archives,
and it’s a false list, it’s made up of people who’ve never even
been on a ballot, that’s wire fraud. That’s a federal crime. You
do two, three federal crimes like that… And they’re also state
crimes, because under Georgia’s racketeering law, which is
tougher than the federal law. That is, when I say tougher, it’s
easier to prove your case. And I’ve done racketeering cases for
the Justice Department as chief investigator, and… I don’t know
how Trump’s gonna wiggle out of indictment in Georgia at this
moment. You know, I’m not saying I’m for or against it, I’m just
gonna say that if there’s one danger here of his indictment,
that’s it. But the National Archives thing is now serious and
it’s in the hands of a grand jury. So, Trump has now, really, a
very serious…he’s got a problem by the law he signed.


Bernstein: And I think he was outmaneuvered by the Attorney
General here. This was a beautiful way to go at Trump. You know,
he didn’t make it public, it was up to Trump. But, since Trump
made a big deal of it, they went public.


Palast: They made a big deal that they wanted to do the raid when
Trump was not there. They knew he was at his golf course in
Bedminster in Jersey. That’s why they did the raid at the time
that they did it. Because in June, when they did show up and it
was friendly, they were let in…Trump even came in and shook hands
with the FBI agents and said whatever we can do for you, whatever
we can get for you, just ask. And I hate to say it, that bit of
friendliness is defrauding the FBI. You’re misleading the FBI by
saying, look, we’re being open, we’re giving you everything, here
I am in the room, what questions do you have? The question will
be whether Donald Trump knew that he had some extra goodies in
his bedroom…. besides eating cookies in bed?


Bernstein: [laughs]


Palast: I do have to add…it was Hillary Clinton’s logs for the
Rose Law Firm which could have put her in prison, which were in
fact kept, those time logs were kept under her bed at the White
House. So, we’ve been here before.


Bernstein: Stranger things have happened — maybe?!?