Or it’s about John Eastman, and sending out copies of false elector certificates to people around the country.
Bobb is far too interested in making sure everyone knows what the FBI was looking for, to be a reliable source for telling us what the FBI was looking for.
Perhaps some of those tchotchkes were bugged, especially the ones given to TFG by a Mr Putin, a Mr Xi, and a Mr Un. That may present another type of security risk. He probably thought they were just nice gifts.
I do not consider him a unbiased source, just putting it in as a single stated detail in the sea of suspicions. We’re chewing on very little right now, and so even a gristly nugget of information is valuable, but should be taken with a grain of salt.
The name of the judge who approved the warrant has gotten out. Checking news for that, I found:
In proper Florida fashion, the guy worked with Pam Bondi and also worked to defend some of the employees of Jeffrey Epstein who (as I understand it) were under suspicion for aiding Epstein ? So that’s a big…youch.
On the up-side, he’s donated to both political parties.
In other news:
He recommended to the DOJ that they release the warrant to the general public. Though again, as I read it, that’s not binding on them and they probably won’t.
Team Trump is refusing to release their version, all while “telling us” what they say is in it.
I don’t think that this is correct. He ordered the DOJ to respond to the request, didn’t say they need to comply. Basically he’s saying that these people want have it unsealed, explain to me why you want it sealed and I’ll decide who’s right. Based on the article you linked to most people seem to think that in the end he will side with the DOJ (and paradoxically Trump, who presumably also wants them sealed, or else he would simply release them himself).
Of course, if the DOJ did release the warrant, Team Trump would be having a total public shit fit about how they are VIOLATING TRUMP’S PRIVACY by publicly revealing information about his “personal possessions” and “important papers”.
This lines up with what I’ve been thinking, that the National Archives had pretty good idea of exactly what documents and other items were missing, they got tired of being jerked around over getting them returned and it was becoming increasingly obvious that Trump had no intention of returning them.
So the folks at the archives basically said “Fuck Around and Find Out”, they took the entire list to the FBI and DOJ who then obtained a warrant for the all items on the list, which probably included gift items.
I’m not convinced they will pursue charges now that they’ve gotten their stuff back. But maybe they will. It would be extra cool if they just charged him with straight up Grand Larceny instead of violations of the Presidential Record Act, though. It won’t happen, but it would be awesome. And I’m pretty sure that’s what would’ve happened if I took a box of stuff from the White House and shipped it to myself.
If the FBI was just reclaiming documents, I think that they’d be fairly public about it. The optics of issuing a warrant against three leader of half the country is too politically intense to turn into a mystery, when the reality is innocuous.
Team Trump wouldn’t be publicizing all of this and trying to set up a story about the FBI planting evidence. If it really was just a PRA grab, then it’s to Trump’s benefit to make it seem like a reasonable and uninteresting affair. “They wanted them. I said, sure, send your guys over.” There would be the hope that this encourages the FBI to keep it at that, and not escalate to prosecutions.