Margot Cleveland Explains Why Trump Warrant Casts a Broad Net, Isn't About 'Classified or Not'
By Nick Arama | Aug 13, 2022 10:30 PM ET
There’s been a lot of talk about classified documents regarding the FBI raid on President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.
Trump himself talked about declassifying documents and there is a report about a “standing order” to declassify documents he had over documents that he was reviewing.
But there’s an important thing to note that the criminal statutes alleged in the warrant go right around that — that it isn’t about whether the documents are classified or not.
https://twitter.com/brithume/status/1558563351831232513It’s a way of trying to get Trump on something while jacking up the left by screaming “classified” or “nuclear.” But those aren’t the critical questions in the underlying statutes. Indeed, there’s been no evidence so far that it has anything to do with nuclear stuff. As we reported, that isn’t anywhere in the warrant, at least what we has been revealed so far. It was just a “sources” report from the Washington Post which has all the validity of three-day-old cheese left out to rot. But all the left ran with it.
The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent Prof. Margot Cleveland explains in an interesting Twitter thread.
Search warrant & schedules has been bristling me & I finally figured out why–we are getting lost in what was taken & what was listed as susceptible to seizure & NOT the criminal provisions on which warrant was based. I’m still ruminating here, but what I see is NONE of the three criminal statutes used to justify the search require materials to be “classified”. Yet, both NY Times & Washington Post directed everyone to idea of Trump keeping classified info & list of what was taken highlighted that too.
The three statutes in question are 18 U.S.C. §§ 793, 2071, and 1519.
But as Cleveland continues:
Espionage Act’s plain language does not require material related to “national defense” to be classified. (Preliminary research confirms my reading but want to dig deeper).
Second criminal provision, also doesn’t distinguish between classified and unclassified.
Nor does the third. And IN FACT the third isn’t concerned about Trump’s possession of it, but his “destruction” of it.
So the “classified” “top secret” is an emotive red herring. The search was authorized NOT because Trump allegedly had top secret information (which he says he didn’t b/c he declassified). But under the statutes, it doesn’t matter.
lots more
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/08/13/margot-cleveland-explains-why-trump-warrant-casts-a-broad-net-isnt-about-classified-or-not-n611863
