Local law enforcement officers stand guard outside of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, on Aug. 9, 2022, the day after it was raided by the FBI in what Trump called an act of “prosecutorial misconduct.” (Giorgio Viera/AFP/Getty Images)
Harold Hutchison is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation.
DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Monday that former President Donald Trump would find it “difficult to prevail” in his potential $100 million suit against the Justice Department over a raid for classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump’s attorneys filed an administrative claim with the Justice Department over the Aug. 8, 2022, raid on Mar-a-Lago and the subsequent indictment secured by special counsel Jack Smith on Monday, a preliminary step before actually suing, that accuses the FBI and DOJ of “malicious political prosecution aimed at affecting an electoral outcome to prevent former President Donald Trump from being reelected,” the New York Post reported.
Turley noted that, like Trump as president, the DOJ has “[its] own form of immunity,” which could come into play should Trump’s lawyers actually file a lawsuit.
“Well, I think he is going to find greater political traction than legal traction on this type of case. The odds are against him,” Turley said. “This is a very difficult type of case to prevail on against the Justice Department. They’re given their own form of immunity, ironically, for discretionary functions.”
“Now, to get around that, what the Trump team is saying is that the Supreme Court has established that this was unconstitutional, that there are privileges or protections here, that you shouldn’t have gone forward with this,” Turley continued.
“That remains an issue on appeal as to what extent the president has those protections, the Supreme Court itself said, at least with regards to the presidential immunity aspects that they have not ruled on this previously. So, this is the type of area the courts tend to not like to be pulled into. So, the odds are against the Trump team on this. What they do get potentially is discovery, but that’s a two-way street. The Department of Justice then gets discovery, as well, against the Trump team.”
U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon of the Southern District of Florida dismissed the charges against Trump in the classified documents case in July, ruling that Smith was unlawfully appointed as special counsel. Cannon previously ordered the appointment of a special master to review documents seized during the Mar-a-Lago raid, but the ruling was later overturned on appeal by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.
“The Supreme Court said that you are not protected for acts that are personal in nature, but you’re also not protected for official acts that are done for personal reasons. That’s a sort of gray area,” Turley said. “They established these three sets of cases, and the courts have to determine where this falls. Now the court in Florida did dismiss this case, and the Trump team has arguments here that are not frivolous.”
The law professor said that even with Trump’s cooperation with some FBI requests prior to the raid, he may not have a good case.
“The bets on this one have got to go in favor of the Justice Department,” Turley said.
The FBI search of President Joe Biden’s vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on Wednesday, continues the search for classified material in various homes and work spaces used by the president and his family in the past decade. What is surprising about Wednesday’s search is not the fact that a sitting president has now been subject to two FBI searches of his residences, but the fact that this search has come roughly three months after the first discovery of documents in a closet in Washington.
Despite that rather lackadaisical record, Biden’s personal counsel Bob Bauer still stated on Wednesday, with no sense of irony, that this has been a “timely DOJ process.” It is “timely” if you use glacial measurements.
If this is how the FBI moves with dispatch, it is chilling to think of the schedule for lower-priority matters. The FBI waited to conduct their search until both counsel and the president went to the house. They will now see if they can find anything.
The search of the president’s small Delaware beach house is also telling in that it sits roughly 80 miles from a massive trove of Biden documents that neither counsel nor the FBI has shown much interest in. The University of Delaware is currently holding a colossal collection of Biden documents from the time before his presidency. The Bidens have effectively converted the university into a type of political safe deposit box, barring media from reviewing documents going back to Biden’s time in Congress.
Universities are usually dedicated to facilitating access to knowledge and information. However, the University of Delaware has spent public funds in resisting media requests for access to look at the documents for material linked to sexual harassment allegations and other controversies. Since some of the material reportedly included classified documents removed by Biden as senator, there is obviously the chance that the university files could also contain classified material.
The sheer size of the documents magnifies those concerns. Biden parked 33 pallets holding 1,875 boxes and 415 gigabytes of electronic records at the university. He then barred the public and the public from looking at the collection. The university has continued to run interference for the president in arguing technical exclusions from public access rules and by claiming to be organizing the material. This has gone on for over a decade.
Since the FBI is already in the state, they might want to consider a trip to the university. However, for the moment, no one seems to want to discuss the collection. It seems that this is all an intractable game of “Delawhere?”
At some point, the Delaware faculty need to object to the use of their institution as a political lock box. While the university’s motto is “knowledge is the light of the mind,” neither the university nor the president appear eager to shed light, let along knowledge, on what these papers contain.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and a practicing criminal defense attorney. He is a Fox News contributor.
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After yet another discovery of classified documents at President Joe Biden’s private Delaware home, Senate Democrats made it clear on Sunday that Biden can no longer excuse his way out of the scandal.
On Saturday, the White House announced another set of classified material improperly in Biden’s possession, again found at Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home. The Justice Department had conducted a “consent” search (the White House claimed the administration requested it) and discovered more classified material, even some dating to Biden’s days in the U.S. Senate.
What are Democrats saying?
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the No. 2 Senate Democrat, admitted on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Biden can no longer attack Donald Trump for the Mar-a-Lago classified document snafu.
“Let’s be honest about it: When that information is found, it diminishes the stature of any person that’s in possession of them. It’s not supposed to happen,” Durbin said. “Whether it was the fault of a staffer or an attorney, it makes no difference. The elected official bears ultimate responsibility.“
There’s a standard that we follow when it comes to members of Congress and classified information. The door to my office is closed. The person who presents the document to me takes it out of a locked briefcase, hands it to me and watches as I read it, when I finish reading it, and he takes it back and puts it in the briefcase and leaves the scene. I mean, that’s how carefully we review these documents.
To think that any of them ended up in boxes in storage one place or the other is just unacceptable.
“To think that any of them ended up in boxes and storage in one place or the other is just unacceptable.”
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) reacts to FBI investigators finding additional classified material at President Biden's Wilmington, Delaware, home. #CNNSOTU@CNNSotupic.twitter.com/5zxXxiE5Gm
Meanwhile, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) was asked on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” how Biden could have improperly retained classified documents from his days as a senator.
“I don’t really know the answer to that question because I review classified material as a senator on the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, but when I do it, it’s always in a classified facility where I don’t have access to the materials other than to sit there and read them,” Kaine responded.
He continued, “That’s why there needs to be this independent investigation and independent prosecutor. How many documents are we talking about? Dozens? A handful or hundreds? How serious are they? Why were they taken? Did anyone have access to them? And then, is the president being cooperative?“
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said that Biden should have “a lot of regrets.” Manchin was responding to Biden’s declaration last week that he has no regrets for retaining the classified documents.
“I think he should have a lot of regrets,” Manchin said.
“I say, whoever’s responsible — I mean, if I hold people accountable, whether it be my chief of staff or, you know, my staff that were doing this and I’m looking at — then I’m going to hold someone accountable, but basically, the buck stops with me,” he added.
Anything else?
A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that a majority of American adults — including registered Democrats — support an investigation into Biden’s improper retention of classified documents.
So now CNN wants to look into The Big Guy? This is the beginning of the end for Biden and “the Biden name”.
Things are heating up for the Bidens. What you will note is how the Democrats begin distancing themselves as a Party from the Bidens, and start to leave Joe and Hunter swinging in the wind. Watch for the small signs.
Just recently CNN actually mentioned that Joe Biden lied about not knowing any of Hunter’s foreign business partners.
Soon, Biden’s blind eye will be declared a bona fide lie. Things will only get worse from there. Democrats will pretend to be outraged by these “new revelations”, and game on.
For now, one has to speculate at what made CNN finally jump ship like rats fleeing the Titanic. It seems unlikely that the Network decided to join in some journalistic integrity. But there are plenty of other ideas. Perhaps Obama finally gave the kill order for his old bro.
CNN Handlers gave the directive….Ruin his career….We can't have him run in '24…. Republican led House is going to dig up DIRT. . Drive it home to all viewers…..all 10 of them….ratings down the drain. .
Are we supposed to congratulate CNN for finally telling the truth, albeit in the face of way too much proof to remain in denial? Or do we just welcome them to the show?
Either way, Biden’s name will never ring quite the same!
“I Give You My Word, As a Biden!”
I’m pretty sure that catch phrase started with Biden’s first big lie, which coincidentally was told on Biden’s first day in Congress. That’s when Biden’s first wife was killed in a tragic accident, most likely a form of vehicular homicide and suicide. It’s quite believable that Mrs. Biden turned into traffic on purpose in an effort to kill herself and her children. Her newborn daughter was also a casualty of the accident.
The lie wasn’t centered around Mrs. Biden’s postpartum depression. In fact, it was glossed over because Joe Biden blamed the other driver, claiming his wife and daughter were murdered by a drunk driver! Boy, did that lie gain traction over the years. So much so that it ruined the life of the truck driver. He spent decades trying to clear his name, fighting off death threats, and being publicly crucified. To this day, his daughter speaks out in defense of her father. But I digress.
Here’s what CNN says about Biden’s word:
For years, as Joe Biden has sought to assure the American public he deserves their trust, he’s relied upon a go-to phrase meant to underscore his credibility: “I give you my word as a Biden.”
But that’s not the only way the Biden family name has been used. The president’s brothers have invoked it in their private business pursuits over the years to suggest access to power and influence, according to a CNN review of court documents, emails and video recordings as well as interviews with former business acquaintances.
A year after Biden was elected, for example, his youngest brother, Frank, boasted in a speech to medical professionals gathered in Boston of the “bully pulpit” he was afforded due to “my brother Joey,” and vowed to help attendees “get federal dollars.” Just three months ago, Frank Biden was an invited keynote speaker at a medical conference in Venice, Italy, where he gave advice to a group lobbying the federal government – a trip he acknowledged he did not pay for but declined to say who did.
Biden’s son, Hunter, meanwhile, has bluntly acknowledged in a memoir that his last name was a “coveted credential” helping him land a lucrative and controversial gig as a board member for a Ukrainian energy company when Joe Biden was vice president. That company, Burisma, “considered my last name gold,” Hunter Biden wrote.
With Republicans taking charge of the House of Representatives this month, the Biden name and what it stands for are expected to be at the center of a wide-ranging oversight inquiry into alleged influence peddling and potential conflicts of interest, even as the GOP has turned its immediate attention to Biden’s handling of classified documents.
The partisan probe is likely to delve deeply into the contents of a laptop computer that Hunter Biden purportedly discarded at a Delaware repair shop in April 2019. A digital copy of the laptop’s hard drive has been broadly shared among right-wing operatives and was provided to CNN by Jack Maxey, a former co-host of Steve Bannon’s “War Room” show. It appears to contain a massive trove of information detailing, among other things, how Hunter Biden worked to put his business associates in the same room as his famous father. Hunter Biden has not confirmed or denied that the laptop was his.
At least one email from the laptop – cited in a November report released by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee – shows Hunter Biden acknowledging that his family lineage was one of his major selling points. As he discussed a Chinese business deal in September 2011, Hunter Biden told a colleague that a potential business partner’s apparent fondness for him “has nothing to do with me and everything to do with my last name.”
Of course, Hunter is exactly right about that.
The Biden last name is the underlying tie between all of this corruption. But for some reason, CNN still wouldn’t give Republicans the satisfaction of acknowledgement. Instead, they continued to promote this narrative that Republicans don’t have all the facts.
When it comes to modern politics, I think it’s fair to say that 90% of fact is fiction, and 90% of fiction is actually fact. Think about it, what are some of the facts, according to the left? Global warming, the ‘advantages’ of green energy, the idea that babies aren’t living beings before they are born… we could go on. But the point is, leftists do not present these ideas as opinions, but rather as hard core truths.
On the flip side, how many Republican “conspiracy theories” have panned out to be the facts? The vaccine is dangerous. The virus is benign without underlying factors. The pandemic was a scam. Hunter’s laptop links the Big Guy to China. Again, the list goes on. Which makes it no surprise that CNN still tried to paint Republicans as out of touch.
CNN adds:
Republicans have suggested that Biden’s son and brothers illegally used their family connections for profit but have so far offered scant evidence to support that claim. Joe Biden has repeatedly said he never discussed his son or brothers’ business dealings with them.
“The President has pledged to restore ethics to the White House and has established the most rigorous ethics guidelines of any administration in history, consistent with his commitment to ensure government works for the American people,” said Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson. “Unlike in the previous administration, no family member has or will serve in the administration or be involved in government decision making.”
Hmmm. Funny. I’ve yet to see an email from Don Jr. working out the terms of selling his father to China. And trust me, if it existed, Democrats would have presented it by now.
President Biden’s son Hunter Biden, who is facing wide-ranging probes into his business dealings, once noted that he and other family members “quarantined” at his father’s home, where classified documents were recently found.
In his memoir published in April 2021, the president’s son said he and other close family members spent election night on Nov. 3, 2020, at the Wilmington, Delaware, home. Hunter Biden wrote that he, his children, his wife Melissa Cohen, and his half-sister Ashley Biden and her husband Howard Krein watched coverage of the presidential election together as votes were counted.
“You would have loved the scene on election night, too, even though the night would’ve driven you nuts, not least because the vote counting dragged on for days,” Hunter Biden wrote in the memoir.
“Yet one of the benefits of waiting so long for the race to be called was that we all waited it out together, at Mom and Dad’s house — Melissa and the baby, my girls, Natalie and Hunter, Ashley and Howard,” he continued in the passage. “More than waiting together, we were also quarantined together. There was no escaping one another.”
President Biden with his son Hunter Biden after attending Mass on Johns Island, South Carolina, on Aug. 13, 2022. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)
In addition to the revelation that Hunter Biden quarantined at the home during the 2020 presidential election, additional evidence has surfaced showing he has spent time at the home on numerous other occasions. Hunter Biden was notably seen traveling with his father from the White House to Delaware on Dec. 16, 2022, just four days prior to the search of the residence that yielded the classified documents. According to the White House, the president’s attorneys searched the Wilmington home and found the documents on Dec. 20.
Hunter Biden also spent time in Wilmington on at least five other instances since his father took office, according to various media reports of his whereabouts. For example, on March 26, 2021, Daily Mail reporter Rob Crilly tweeted footage of Hunter Biden traveling with the president to Wilmington.
The Washington Free Beacon reported Wednesday that it had obtained photos placing Hunter Biden at the Delaware home on July 30, 2017, shortly after his father departed the White House with documents from his tenure. The pictures showed Hunter Biden driving in his father’s 1967 Corvette Stingray, which the president told reporters was parked next to where the classified documents had been found last month.
President Biden and his son Hunter Biden celebrate at an election rally in Wilmington, Delaware, after it was announced that he had won the presidential election on Nov. 7, 2020. (Reuters/Jim Bourg)
The White House first revealed last week that a series of classified documents, including some marked “top-secret,” dating back to Biden’s time as vice president had been discovered at the Penn Biden Center. Later in the week, the White House acknowledged a second batch of classified documents was found in the garage of the president’s Wilmington residence.
“As the President said, he takes classified information and materials seriously, and as we have said, we have cooperated from the moment we informed the [National] Archives that a small number of documents were found, and we will continue to cooperate,” the president’s lawyer Richard Sauber said Thursday in a statement.
“We are confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the President and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of this mistake,” he added.
Hunter Biden, Melissa Cohen and Baby Beau with POTUS on trip to Wilmington today pic.twitter.com/MhwEiZAY79
Then, on Saturday, Sauber disclosed that yet another batch of five documents were discovered at the home despite earlier assurances from White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre that the search had been completed.
Republicans, meanwhile, have zeroed in on whether Hunter Biden had access to the classified information — which included intelligence regarding Ukraine, Iran and the U.K. — in the aftermath of the discovery of the documents in the president’s home. Hunter Biden is currently under federal investigation and faces congressional inquiries regarding his business dealings.
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed career prosecutor Robert Hur to serve as a special counsel to investigate the president’s handling of classified documents.
Fox News’ Pat Ward contributed to this report.
Thomas Catenacci is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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