Apollonian
Guest Columnist
Jack Smith's Prosecution of Trump is a Coverup Wrapped in a Setup...
@AMUSE
MAY 04, 2024
Link: https://politiquerepublic.substack....secution-of-trump?utm_source=post-email-title
What if the entire Mar-a-Lago raid was part of a cover-up combined with a setup? Thanks to the exceptional reporting by independent journalist Julie Kelly, we now know this scenario is more likely than not. It’s a chilling reality.
Democrats were desperate to ascertain whether Trump had kept a copy of the Crossfire Hurricane binders. Trump believed he had declassified them, but the DOJ maintained they required further review and redactions before release. Three years later, the DOJ still hasn't released them. Knowing that Trump felt entitled to retain a copy, they suspected he and his associates might have done so. The Democrats needed a pretext to reclaim the binders. The White House met with Jay Bratt, one of the original Crossfire Hurricane investigators, around the same time they pressured the GSA to send four to six pallets of Trump’s presidential records from a Virginia warehouse to Mar-a-Lago. This created the perfect opportunity to infiltrate Trump’s private estate and prosecute him for illegally retaining classified documents. Jay Bratt is now Jack Smith's top prosecutor.
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Classified Document Case Timeline
On January 19, 2021, then-President Trump declassified the Crossfire Hurricane Binders, documents that purportedly contain explosive information about the Clintons, Obama, Biden, and other key national intelligence officials. Despite Trump's move to make these records public, the DOJ has obstructed their release, to shield these figures from scrutiny. Meanwhile, both the White House and the DOJ suspect Trump and his allies possess copies of the binders, creating a significant concern for those implicated in their contents.In September 2021, the GSA reached out to the Trump transition team, demanding the immediate removal of four to six pallets of boxes weighing up to 2,000 pounds from its Virginia warehouse. These boxes contained documents accumulated chronologically throughout Trump's term. This sudden insistence raises a crucial question: Was the White House orchestrating the GSA's push for Trump to remove these boxes?
In September 2021, Jack Smith's lead prosecutor, Jay Bratt, held a meeting with the White House to discuss Trump's possession of the Crossfire Hurricane Binders. The question arises: did the White House disclose to Bratt that the GSA was on the verge of sending pallets of presidential records, potentially including classified documents, to Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate?
In September 2021, between four and six pallets of boxes sent by the GSA arrived at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump employees placed them in various rooms within his private residence. Despite their arrival, the majority of the boxes were neither opened nor reviewed by anyone, including the president, before the FBI seized them.
In January 2022, responding to pressure from NARA, Trump's transition team sent 15 boxes of documents to the archivist. The boxes remained unopened, and the documents inside were neatly arranged in chronological order, suggesting they hadn't been accessed since leaving the White House. NARA identified up to 180 documents that might have been classified but did not find the Crossfire Hurricane binders and ultimately referred the matter to the DOJ.
In June 2022, Jack Smith's top prosecutor, Jay Bratt, requested to see the remaining documents at Mar-a-Lago. Trump met with Bratt and instructed his lawyers to provide anything he needed. Bratt was then shown the remaining boxes, examined them, and removed several documents. It's crucial to note that Bratt was involved in the original Crossfire Hurricane investigation and is named in the Crossfire Hurricane binders. Although he was searching for those binders, he never disclosed this to Trump. A year earlier, Bratt had met with the White House to discuss the binders and strategies for determining if Trump retained copies. Bratt, a lifelong Democrat and Biden donor, failed to locate the binders during his visit. Just two months later, FBI agents raided the former president's home.
On August 8, 2022, one year after the GSA pressured Trump to take delivery of the boxes, and following the prosecutor's meeting at the White House, the FBI raided the former president's home to seize them. Rather than simply seizing the boxes and sending them to a filter team for review, the FBI chose a more intrusive approach reviewing them on-site. It is becoming clear they were looking for something specific - the Crossfire Hurricane binders.
Seemingly aware that the boxes contained classified presidential records, the FBI brought cover sheets marked as classified to Mar-a-Lago. While searching through various boxes, they arranged documents on the floor with these cover sheets and took photographs. These images were then leaked to The New York Times and The Washington Post, which quickly published them. The photographs created the misleading impression that Trump had haphazardly scattered classified documents across the floor of his home.
On August 9, 2022, the FBI flew the boxes to Washington, D.C., where they were reviewed by agents. However, the agents failed to document which files were in which boxes, and they didn't record which boxes were sealed versus which were opened. Trump's transition team had boxed the president's records chronologically, packing them as they were created. The FBI's mishandling of the evidence makes it impossible to verify this chronology or determine whether any documents were accessed after the GSA delivered them to Mar-a-Lago.
The Full Timeline
