"It means that the Justice Department is prepared to go out and use its criminal powers, the power of subpoena, the power to compel witnesses to testify, the ability to go to a judge and try and get a search warrant.... the federal government's most powerful tools...."

Words intoned unironically on today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, which is titled "The Sprawling Government Effort to Prosecute Barack Obama."

Transcript and audio at Podscribe, here.

I was out on my sunrise walk, listening with earbuds, and when I heard "get a search warrant," I had to restrain myself from voicing my sarcasm: Who could have thought that a former U.S. President would have a search warrant executed against him? Is there a plan to invade his home in the early morning hours? To root through the underpants and bras of the former First Lady? Inconceivable — wasn't it? — before this tyrant fought his way back into the White House.

"President Barack Hussein Obama kept 33 million pages of documents, much of them classified. How many of them pertained to nuclear? Word is, lots!"

That's a statement Trump put up today on his website.

And there's this at the NYT: "Trump claims he declassified all the documents at Mar-a-Lago. Even if that’s true, it probably doesn’t matter."

"Mr. Garland’s decision to make a public appearance came at an extraordinary moment in the [Justice] department’s 152-year history..."

"... as the sprawling investigation of a former president who remains a powerful political force gains momentum, with prosecutors from an array of the department’s divisions and regional offices taking new actions, seemingly every day. Mr. Garland, a laconic former judge, had come under increasing pressure this week to provide more public information about why the Justice Department decided that a search was necessary and who approved it — or at least to offer an explanation of the legal processes undertaken by his subordinates. But he seemed, even on Thursday, to do so with considerable reluctance, and reiterated his often-stated commitment to conducting the inquiry within the confines of the legal system rather than in public.... Mr. Garland did not say how, or when, it became clear to his team that the 15 boxes of material turned over by Mr. Trump earlier this year was insufficient. But he cast his decision to approve the warrant as an exigent necessity. 'The department does not take such a decision lightly,” he said. “Where possible, it is standard practice to seek less intrusive means as an alternative to a search and to narrowly scope any search that is undertaken.'... Mr. Garland and his inner circle are eager to avoid the approach adopted by James Comey, the former F.B.I. director, whose public statements about investigations into Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign were seen as a political and legal disaster. "

From "Garland moves to make public the warrant and supporting documents used in the search of Mar-a-Lago" (NYT).

I find myself in The Wall Street Journal.

Here's the entire blog post.

"Facebook Gave Nebraska Cops A Teen's DMs So They Could Prosecute Her For Having An Abortion."

Forbes reported on Monday.

I found that after I noticed that #DeleteFacebook was trending yesterday. I assume that trend gathered momentum before this crucial update: "This story has been updated to note that the Facebook messages were obtained via search warrant." 

Oh! A search warrant! And the story went up the same day as the big search-warrant-authorized raid on Mar-a-Lago, the day Trump-haters were all saying the FBI got a search warrant, and you know what that means! That means he's guilty and hooray for the government agents getting right in there and seizing everything. 

From the annals of #DeleteFacebook:

#DeleteFacebook is trending because apparently, although not surprisingly, Zuckerberg is a shady snitch. https://t.co/0F3nDV7ZBa

— Perez Hilton (@PerezHilton) August 9, 2022

"We have full access to everything. We can go everywhere."

That was the repeated statement of the 3 DOJ lawyers — who were described as displaying an "arrogant" demeanor — who were present during the Mar-a-Lago raid, according to an eyewitness quoted in "FBI searched Melania’s wardrobe, spent hours in Trump’s private office during Mar-a-Lago raid" (NY Post).

I'm not surprised that a search extends into a woman's most intimate space — how could searches be effective if the woman's closet were off limits? — but I recognize that this is something that hits onlookers hard. It makes the government seem more brutal if you picture its agents rooting around in the lady's underwear drawer. 

"The Justice Department is not ready to charge Trump for the [Capitol] riot. It lacks proof that he is criminally culpable for the violence."

"As for the non-violent potential crimes it is investigating — obstruction of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the government — these are based on disputed theories that Trump and his apologists could persuasively frame as a partisan weaponization of the Justice Department against the likely 2024 GOP nominee. Consequently, the DOJ does not want to suggest that Trump is the subject of a criminal investigation related to the Capitol riot. Nor does it want to be perceived as having told a court it has probable cause tying Trump to Capitol riot crimes."

Writes Andrew McCarthy in "The FBI’s Mar-a-Lago Raid: It’s about the Capitol Riot, Not the Mishandling of Classified Information" (National Review).

"Secrecy is exactly what is wrong about this."

Below, @axios on Trump Mar-A-Lago raid. Secrecy is exactly what is wrong about this. Secrecy allowed wild media speculation in Trump-Russia matter. As target, Trump is entitled to copy of warrant, underlying affidavit. He should make them public immediately. Today. pic.twitter.com/96FZ20lcZB

— Byron York (@ByronYork) August 9, 2022

The image says: "The bottom line: These investigations are top secret. So more likely than not, we won't get the full picture any time soon."

That's from Mike Allen at Axios: "What we know — and don't know — about the Trump raid."

If it was political, why was it so politically obtuse?

It looks increasingly like the FBI raid was to find mishandled classified documents and not some other DOJ investigation which was my first thought. Mishandling documents doesn’t seem like raid material. It does however seem like excellent campaign material for Trump.

— Andrew Yang🧢⬆️🇺🇸 (@AndrewYang) August 9, 2022

ADDED: Yang just posted that, and I can see the tweeters who are jumping right in to push back. These are the least subtle contributors to the national discourse, and they are getting way out in front of those  who might offer a sound, sophisticated, principled defense of what the FBI has done. 

I'm seeing:

Jesus pal do you ever shut up?/Yeah, fck National security/It’s raid worthy. You Quisling.

And: 

 

But her emails pic.twitter.com/tBQ1FrYMze

— GMErican Dream 🏴‍☠️💙💛🧢 (@moonsoon69420) August 9, 2022

Mike Lee — lawyer, former federal prosecutor, and current member of the Senate Judiciary Committee — has a lot of questions about the Mar-a-Lago raid...

... so many that he lost count. I'll copy them all, and don't think I skipped one (he jumped from "Third" to "Fifth" [ADDED: and from "Tenth" to "Twelfth"]):

As a lawyer, former federal prosecutor, and current member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I have a few questions about the FBI’s raid of Mar a Lago. First, did Attorney General Garland personally sign off on this action?

Second, why break into the safe rather than seize it, take it into custody, and then seek a warrant to open it?

Third, why obtain and execute a search warrant rather than first seeking the items in question either through an informal process or with a subpoena? 

Here are 8 TikToks to delight or vex you. Let me know what you think.

 1. "Ever since I was told that corn was real, it tasted good."

2. Yes, there is a burger bra. The question is what to wear with it.

3. For the European person — the coolest places in America.

4. Mr. Jeff's Musical Gizmos is open. 

5. Do you know the song my recently departed mother loved?

6. Getting searched at the San Francisco airport. (This can't be real, can it?)

7. Approaching the volcano in Iceland.

8. Glen Campbell and Leon Russell play "Jambalaya."

"So why the raids? Since when does the FBI [conduct] raids over missing diaries?"

Asks Jonathan Turley in "FBI Raids Project Veritas Writers . . . Over A Missing Biden Diary?" 

Project Veritas decided not to run the story because it could not verify that the diary belonged to [Ashley] Biden... Instead, it alerted the police, according to [James] O’Keefe: “Project Veritas gave the diary to law enforcement to ensure it could be returned to its rightful owner. We never published it.” ...

What is the alleged federal crime (and what is the precedent for a major federal investigation over such an alleged theft)? What precautions were taken by the Biden Administration in light of the claimed media status of the targeted individuals? Why was there a delay in this action being taken if the alleged theft occurred a year ago? Has this matter been under investigation for a year and did the White House request the intervention of the FBI?

At a Biden drive-in rally, "security involves not just a wand-and-pat-down, but a full sweep of the vehicle. For this reporter, that meant briefly being detained..."

"... and questioned by Secret Service agents after a pair of spent shotgun shell casings were discovered in the rear of the vehicle. (I’m a hunter. It’s hunting season. My car’s a little messy.) Applause lines in speeches are now honk lines. The car horn, of course, allows for limited expression. An outdoor event is also open to heckling, and a band of Trump supporters positioned themselves easily within earshot of the speakers. And they brought their own horns. At various points the heckling horns appeared to provide dramatic crescendos accompanying speeches, while at other times, they were distracting, with Biden remarking on them several times. Then, of course, there were times when the horns of jeer merged with the honks of cheer, creating an ambiguous cacophony." 

From "Election 2020 is so weird. Here’s what Biden’s drive-in rally was like" by Dave Orrick (Twin Cities Pioneer Press). Orrick attended yesterday's rally at the Minnesota State Fairground, which  was "essentially invite-only, with details sent to a relatively small list of party activists."

Of course, your car must be searched before you can get into a drive-in rally. You could have a weapon. Of course, it must be limited to party insiders: Cars themselves are potential weapons. And of course, the horn honking can make a cacophony of the speech.

 I see — in U.S. News — that the horns really bothered Biden:

A group close to the podium where he spoke blasted horns and shouted. Biden... shout[ed] to drown them out... “These guys are not very polite — but they’re like Trump.” [Advocating masks, he ad libbed], “This isn’t a political statement, like those ugly folks over there beeping the horns — it’s a patriotic duty.” 

It was an "essentially invite-only" event and he was reduced to calling people "ugly"? You're speaking to cars, you encourage some honking as an alternative to cheering, but then there's too much honking, and you have to insult people?

I listened to some of that rally on my car radio and watched some of it on TV. What was most notable to me was how much Biden garbled the words. He referred to "Amy Kobuchar" (and never corrected himself). He said a word that sounded like "pussy" (but wasn't, of course). I was saying out loud the things that it sounded like he was saying. Just for laughs. Was I making fun of the disabled, given that Biden is said to be a stutterer? No, I wasn't mocking stuttering. It was the articulation of wrong syllables and the mushing of strings of syllables into near incomprehensibility. 

Why was Biden spending time in Minnesota so few days before the election? The easiest answer is: to help Tina Smith win reelection to the U.S. Senate. It's a close race. She could lose, and it could make the difference in flipping the Senate. Or was he there because there's actually a risk that he could lose Minnesota? I see — in U.S. News — that "Joe Biden says he has learned from the mistakes that Hillary Clinton's campaign made four years ago in the Midwest." He needs at least to avoid a crushing defeat — which I would define as losing any state that Hillary won. He knows the erstwhile "blue wall" states of the Midwest can't be taken for granted. Imagine losing not just Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — like Hillary — but losing Minnesota too. And failing to get the Democratic Senator reelected. 

But I don't know. Is Biden playing from such a desperate position? He's supposed to win, not just avoid humiliating loss. 

I see in that U.S. News article that Biden will rally in Detroit today — with assistance not only from Barack Obama but also Stevie Wonder. It's another drive-in rally, so people don't really have a chance to see the stars, except on TV.

ADDED: Here are the polls from Minnesota showing Trump gaining on Biden.

"A police tactic meant to keep officers safer — raiding homes late at night, giving occupants little or no warning — can conflict with 'castle doctrine' laws meant to keep homeowners safe by giving them leeway to use deadly force against intruders."

"In this case, Taylor’s boyfriend saw the police and thought they were intruders. He says he fired in self-defense. The police fired back, in self-defense against his self-defense. The result, as in other cases, was a tragedy that the law didn’t prevent and won’t punish.... Even after they fired back — missing Walker but striking Taylor, who was standing nearby — Walker said he did not know they were the police. 'I don’t know what is happening,' Walker said in a call he made to 911. 'Somebody kicked in the door and shot my girlfriend.'.... Under Kentucky’s version of the castle doctrine... residents are allowed to use defensive force against someone 'forcibly entering' a dwelling...."

From "A woman killed. An officer shot. And no one legally responsible" by David Fahrenthold (WaPo).

The method of entering a home at night is presented as necessary to prevent people with drugs from destroying the evidence. From the comments at WaPo: "Rabid, over-enthusiastic drug enforcement. People die over nothing. Legalize and then focus on treatment."

"In a major statement on privacy in the digital age, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the government generally needs a warrant to collect troves of location data about the customers of cellphone companies."

Adam Liptak reports in the NYT. The case is Carpenter v. United States.

“We hold only that a warrant is required in the rare case where the suspect has a legitimate privacy interest in records held by a third party,” the chief justice wrote. The court’s four more liberal justices joined his opinion....

Mr. Carpenter’s lawyers said cellphone companies had turned over 127 days of records that placed his phone at 12,898 locations, based on information from cellphone towers. The records disclosed whether he had slept at home on given nights and whether he attended his usual church on Sunday mornings....

Technology companies including Apple, Facebook and Google filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to continue to bring Fourth Amendment law into the modern era. “No constitutional doctrine should presume,” the brief said, “that consumers assume the risk of warrantless government surveillance simply by using technologies that are beneficial and increasingly integrated into modern life.”

AND: From SCOTUSblog:

Here’s the limiting language from the majority opinion in Carpenter:

Our decision today is a narrow one. We do not express a view on matters not before us: real-time CSLI or “tower dumps” (a download of information on all the devices that connected to a particular cell site during a particular interval). We do not disturb the application of Smith and Miller or call into question conventional surveillance techniques and tools, such as security cameras. Nor do we address other business records that might incidentally reveal location information. Further, our opinion does not consider other collection techniques involving foreign affairs or national security. As Justice Frankfurter noted when considering new innovations in airplanes and radios, the Court must tread carefully in such cases, to ensure that we do not “embarrass the future.” Northwest Airlines, Inc. v. Minnesota, 322 U. S. 292, 300 (1944)

"Civil libertarians should be concerned whenever the government interferes with the lawyer-client relationship."

"Clients should be able to rely on confidentiality when they disclose their most intimate secrets in an effort to secure their legal rights. A highly publicized raid on the president’s lawyer will surely shake the confidence of many clients in promises of confidentiality by their lawyers. They will not necessarily understand the nuances of the confidentiality rules and their exceptions. They will see a lawyer’s office being raided and all his files seized. I believe we would have been hearing more from civil libertarians — the American Civil Liberties Union, attorney groups and privacy advocates — if the raid had been on Hillary Clinton’s lawyer. Many civil libertarians have remained silent about potential violations of President Trump’s rights because they strongly disapprove of him and his policies. That is a serious mistake, because these violations establish precedents that lie around like loaded guns capable of being aimed at other targets."

Writes Alan Dershowitz in "Targeting Trump's lawyer should worry us all."

I don't know if this Japanese concept is the answer...

... but it's almost surely helpful and it certainly makes a kick-ass Venn diagram:

ADDED: I just created the tag "Venn diagram" and went into the 15-year archive of the blog to make it retroactive. 15 posts with that tag now! Interesting stuff, too. Click it. I especially like "It depends on what the meaning of 'Venn diagram' is..." — about a diagram tweeted by Hillary Clinton that failed to Venn. Also, how "that popular Venn diagram with circles for prostitutes, doctors, and TSA agents and the 'get paid to touch your junk' punchline in the center is not a proper Venn diagram." I mean, if you're going to Venn, Venn. I'm venting about Venning.

And, from 2005, "Donald Trump has some kind of neurological event," quoting the late, lamented Television Without Pity:

[I]n the Boardroom... where Donald Trump has some kind of neurological event and goes completely apeshit. And I mean to say that you have never seen this kind of behavior in your life. He first abruptly asks Clay if he's gay, acts stunned that Clay is gay, ascertains that Clay is therefore not attracted to women, clarifies that this Venn diagram excludes even women such as Alla, and then explains to us that this is why restaurants have menus: while Trump likes steak, other people like spaghetti. Later, without even stopping to breathe almost, he: asks Adam straight up if he's a virgin (he is, but won't admit it), counsels him not to be afraid of sex because it is "not a big deal," posits that Adam will ten years from now be more "comfortable with sex," shares that sex has gotten him into "a lot of trouble" and cost him "a lot of money," discusses at length whether Adam is "soft" or "hard," and wraps up by telling Adam that there's "nothing like" sex, and that he should look forward to having it one day, in the creepiest, ickiest, most pervuncular way imaginable.

"The New York Times is asking the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to unseal secret documents related to the wiretapping of Carter Page..."

Great!

Normally, even the existence of such material is a closely guarded secret.... But President Trump lowered the shield of secrecy surrounding such materials on Friday by declassifying the Republican memo about Mr. Page, after finding that the public interest in disclosing its contents outweighed any need to protect the information. Because Mr. Trump did so, the Times argues, there is no longer a justification “for the Page warrant orders and application materials to be withheld in their entirety,” and “disclosure would serve the public interest.”

This is basically what I was saying I wanted in "How to resolve the discrepancy of opinion over the Nunes memo" (February 3):

So, it seems, the question is whether it was significantly deceptive to give the FISA court enough information to make it possible for the court to infer that the information came from people who were biased against Trump but to withhold the known and specific information that it was paid for by the Democratic National Committee or the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign....

[E]xactly how was this general information phrased? The unnamed official in the WaPo article says there was "ample disclosure" — but how much disclosure was there?... I want to know exactly what the language was and how deceptive it may have been....

AND: Andrew McCarthy (at National Review) develops another angle: The question isn't so much whether Christopher Steele was trustworthy (given who paid him) but whether his sources were corroborated. It's not enough for the FBI and the Justice Department to trust the sources because Steele is trustworthy. Steele is another investigator, not the source of the information.

From everything we have heard thus far, the FBI did not corroborate Steele’s informants. Their inflammatory allegations about Trump are acknowledged to be “salacious and unverified.” According to the Nunes memo, FBI corroboration efforts were only in their “infancy” at the time the first warrant was sought, and they never yielded anything but “minimal” verification (which may be a charitable way of putting it)....

To justify a finding of probable cause, the government must satisfy the court as to the credibility of the informant who, it is claimed, witnessed the factual transactions described in the warrant. There is no vicarious credibility: The informant’s reliability cannot be shored up by the impeccable credentials of the investigative agent. The agent is not the witness; the informant is.

"Mueller obtains 'tens of thousands' of Trump transition emails."

Axios explains. Excerpt:

Charging "unlawful conduct," Kory Langhofer, counsel for the transition team, wrote in a letter to congressional committees Saturday that "career staff at the General Services Administration ... have unlawfully produced [transition team] private materials, including privileged communications, to the Special Counsel's Office."...

The transition sources said they were surprised about the emails because they have been in touch with Mueller's team and have cooperated.... The sources say that transition officials assumed that Mueller would come calling, and had sifted through the emails and separated the ones they considered privileged. But the sources said that was for naught, since Mueller has the complete cache from the dozen accounts.

"It looks like Obama did spy on Trump, just as he apparently did to me."

Writes Sharyl Attkisson.

The government ... got caught monitoring journalists at Fox News, The Associated Press, and, as I allege in a federal lawsuit, my computers while I worked as an investigative correspondent at CBS News....

Then, as now, instead of getting the bigger story, some in the news media and quasi-news media published false and misleading narratives pushed by government interests. They implied the computer intrusions were the stuff of vivid imagination, conveniently dismissed forensic evidence from three independent examinations that they didn’t review. All seemed happy enough to let news of the government’s alleged unlawful behavior fade away, rather than get to the bottom of it....

Officials involved in the surveillance and unmasking of U.S. citizens have said their actions were legal and not politically motivated. And there are certainly legitimate areas of inquiry to be made by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. But look at the patterns. It seems that government monitoring of journalists, members of Congress and political enemies — under multiple administrations — has become more common than anyone would have imagined two decades ago. So has the unmasking of sensitive and highly protected names by political officials....