Tangle - An update on the Mar-a-Lago search.

Episode Date: August 15, 2022

What we've learned since our previous coverage on the FBI's raid of Trump's Florida residence. Plus, a question about armed IRS agents.You can read today's podcast here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we are going to be talking about the Trump search at Mar-a-Lago. We've gotten quite a bit of new information since our last podcast about this when it first happened on Wednesday. Well, it happened on Monday. We ran the podcast on Wednesday. So I figured it was worth jumping back in today with some kind of updated arguments and debate and talking points that are happening across the political spectrum. Before we jump in, I want to give a quick heads up. On Friday, we published a subscriber's only post exploring the

question of which party is more extreme. This edition got a lot of positive feedback and I wanted to plug it again here. Whether you are a subscriber or not, you can read the post by clicking a link in today's episode. Non-subscribers though will be prompted to subscribe partway through the piece. You'll run into a little paywall, so just a heads up about that. All right, we're going to jump in and start off as always with our quick hits. First up, author Salman Rushdie will recover after being stabbed on stage at a speaking event in New York City. Rushdie authored the Satanic Verses in 1988, which some Islamic sects considered blasphemous. In 1989, the Supreme Leader of Iran called for Rushdie's death by issuing a fatwa.

A 24-year-old suspect is in custody. 2. Brittany Griner appealed her conviction on drug charges in Russia, her defense team said. 3. A United Nations ship departed Ukraine with grain shipments for East Africa, the first chartered by the UN since the war began. Number four, one year ago today, the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan. Number five, New York City health officials identified polio and wastewater samples suggesting likely circulation of the virus. Number six and a bonus quick hits, Congress is on recess until September. The president is currently on vacation and the vice president is in Hawaii.

Tonight, outrage from right-wing groups and Trump-aligned Republicans after federal agents searched the former president's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. So I think every Republican believes that the FBI, when it comes to Trump, and other organizations have lost their minds. Federal investigators are now poring over those top-secret documents taken from former President Donald Trump's Florida estate. Among the most alarming, a collection labeled top-secret, sensitive, compartmented information. PC News learning that authorities must now track the chain of custody of those top-secret documents

seized to see if any of the material was compromised. Since we first covered the search on Wednesday, significant information has been released that makes the story worth following up on. On Monday, August 8th, the FBI searched former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in Florida. A federal magistrate judge in Florida approved the warrant for the search, which means FBI agents had to show probable cause that a crime had been committed, and evidence of which was still at Mar-a-Lago. Attorney General Merrick Garland said he personally approved of the search. According to a search warrant released on Friday,

the FBI agents removed 20 boxes of items, binders of photos, an executive grant of clemency for Roger Stone, and a handwritten note. There were 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked as top secret, the government's highest ranking for classified documents, according to the Wall Street Journal. Those documents are meant to be available only in special secure government facilities. The search was part of a long-running investigation into whether the White House records were taken to Mar-a-Lago. The Presidential Records Act dictates that such documents must be turned over to the National Archives at the end of a president's term. In January, the National

Archives retrieved 15 boxes of documents, and it appeared negotiations on turning over such documents were friendly. However, some of those documents ended up being classified, which prompted the Justice Department to get involved. There is no criminal penalty for violating the Presidential Records Act. However, there were three criminal laws cited in the warrant. One was the 1917 Espionage Act, which prohibits the mishandling of national defense documents and materials. Violations of the Espionage Act carry a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. However, a maximum sentence is seldom handed down. The second law cited was related to obstruction

of justice, and the code specifically criminalizes efforts to interfere with federal investigations by destroying or falsifying documents. The third law cited makes it a crime to conceal or destroy government records and penalizes violators with a three-year maximum sentence. This law also has provisions that disqualify violators from serving in federal office. However, there is a great deal of constitutional debate about whether violating this law would prohibit someone from running for president. Trump and his allies have claimed that he had declassified all of the documents taken in the search. However, federal regulations lay out a very specific written process to make such declassification legally effective, so there should be a paper record.

It is so far unclear if Trump followed that process with the documents in question. Additionally, each of the three laws cited in the warrant can be violated even if the documents are not unclassified. The Washington Post cited anonymous sources who claimed that the FBI was looking for documents related to the U.S. nuclear program. The New York Times reported that a lawyer for Trump signed a written statement in June asserting all material marked as classified and held in storage at Mar-a-Lago had been returned to the government. President Trump, meanwhile, has said that the FBI took material protected by attorney-client privilege and has requested it back. The Justice Department

says it has a filter team in place to review and return any material before it gets to investigators if it fits that criteria. An investigation could take months to conclude. In the wake of the search, threats against the FBI have spiked both online and offline. A pro-Trump veteran was killed in a shootout with police in Ohio after attempting to enter an FBI office in Cincinnati. Heavily armed protesters showed up outside the FBI office in Phoenix, Arizona. The synagogue of Judge Bruce Reinhart, who approved the warrant, had to cancel services following online threats against the judge. In a moment, you're going to hear some reactions from the left and the right on the latest news, and then my take. All right, first up, we'll start with what the right is saying.

The right is mixed on the search, with some calling for more details, while others say it is an open attempt to keep Trump from running in 2024. Some say Trump should be held to similar standards as Hillary Clinton, and the bar is high for any criminal prosecution. Others argue that Biden is weaponizing the Justice Department to keep Trump from winning the 2024 race. In the dispatch, David French said to apply the Hillary Clinton rule to Donald Trump. Here we have two people at the apex of American politics, one a former Secretary of State and then presumptive Democratic nominee for President, the other a former president and now frontrunner for the Republican nomination, French wrote. Both of them possessed immense

classification authority. By executive order, Clinton had the power to classify and declassify State Department information up to the top secret level. As president, Trump possessed even greater authority. Both Clinton and Trump's conduct implicated the same statute, 18 U.S.C. § 793. That statute imposes substantial criminal penalties on anyone who willfully or through gross negligence removes national defense information from its proper place of custody. The DOJ should go forward with the same rule it applied to Hillary Clinton, including the same level of deference. Any other result would simply be unjust insofar as it would refuse to treat similarly situated people similarly. It would be profoundly destabilizing,

French said. There cannot be one set of standards for Democrats and another for Republicans. Would applying this same standard mean Trump, too, should not face prosecution? Well, not necessarily. We can't yet conclude that Trump and Clinton's misconduct is equivalent, and the reason why may relate not to the mishandling of defense information, but rather to obstruction of justice. The available reporting indicates that Trump didn't simply remove clearly marked classified material from the White House, he also retained much of that material in spite of repeated requests that it be returned, retained some of that material in defiance of a subpoena, and then ultimately treated the material as his personal property. In The Federalist,

John Daniel Davidson said the 2024 election is being rigged in plain sight. First, consider the FBI raid. No serious person believes that a documents dispute was the real purpose of the raid. The idea that the FBI would search the home of a former president and potential 2024 GOP candidate over an ongoing and not uncommon disagreement over presidential records with the National Archives is absurd on its face. In his brief and self-congratulatory press conference Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland said he personally authorized the search on Trump's home, that the Justice Department does not take such decision lightly, and that it always seeks to use a less intrusive means as an alternative to a search and to narrowly scope any search that is undertaken. But if that were true,

it more or less rules out the theory that the FBI was looking for classified documents, Davidson wrote. The disagreement between the National Archives and Trump has been ongoing for months, and Trump's lawyers have been cooperating with the relevant authorities. Rating Trump's private residence over that, and in the process triggering a political crisis, makes zero sense. As some expert observers have pointed out, including my colleague Margo Cleveland, a far more plausible explanation is that the FBI was perhaps on a fishing expedition looking for evidence that could implicate Trump in the January 6th riot. It's no secret that Democrats in the January 6th committee want Garland to charge Trump with seditious conspiracy in hopes of making it

impossible for Trump to run in 2024. In that case, a documents dispute with the National Archives would be nothing more than a flimsy pretext to get into Trump's residence and look for incriminating evidence related to January 6th. The Wall Street Journal editorial board said the details released did not settle anything. The list of seized documents included no details, the board wrote, but someone leaked to the Washington Post that among the seized items were quote classified documents relating to nuclear weapons end quote. That sounds ominous, which may have been the point of the leak, and it fed the revival of perferphid media speculation that Mr. Trump is a foreign agent looking to sell secrets. Let's stipulate that mishandling classified documents

is bad practice and can be criminal. The FBI had cause to be concerned if it had reason to believe that secrets were improperly taken or stored in Mar-a-Lago. It wouldn't be the first time Mr. Trump was ill-disciplined about secrets. But it has been 18 months since Mr. Trump left the White House. So why the sudden urgency that required Monday's full-scale search? If the documents were serious nuclear secrets, you'd think the Justice Department would have demanded their return as soon as that was known. And if such documents are floating around Mar-a-Lago, why tell the world via a leak in the Washington Post, the board asked. The warrant also mentioned

USC-793, also known as the Espionage Act, which the press is flogging as the big story. But that law has rarely been employed over decades, and it is intended to prosecute individuals who transmit secrets to foreign agents or governments. Charging Mr. Trump under the Espionage Act merely for keeping out of his residence classified documents that he claims were declassified would be a gross prosecutorial overreach. Alright, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. The left says the search was justified and that Trump's excuses are contradictory. Many say the law must apply to Trump just as it does to anyone else and hope he faces consequences

if he took classified documents. Some say Trump's defenses don't hold up to any scrutiny at all. In Slate, Ben Mathis-Lilley criticized Trump's excuses point by point. On Thursday night, the Washington Post reported that classified documents related to nuclear weapons were among the items that agents were looking for. While the average voter may not be concerned about whether former presidents are following federal archiving guidelines to the letter, nuclear secrets are a different matter, he said. As has been noted for years, moreover, Mar-a-Lago is a working business whose guests don't have to pass background checks, and apparently, some of the documents that were retrieved were chilling in a regular old storage room by the pool. Trump has released a statement

asserting that 1. The material taken from him was declassified, 2. the Department of Justice could have gotten access to it by asking him directly, and 3. Barack Obama also took classified material with him to Chicago after leaving office. The first claim has not yet been backed up by any sort of paper trail, and as Slate's Fred Kaplan explains, there is already reporting available that indicates that even if the Trump White House attempted to declassify the documents taken in the raid, the process was not completed, and, further, that he could still be criminally liable for violating laws regarding sensitive information even if it had been, he said. The second claim is undermined by reports that the DOJ issued a subpoena to Trump covering the materials in question and met with his representatives earlier this year before

ultimately applying for a search warrant. The third has been addressed by a National Archives and Records Administration statement, which notes that it maintains and controls presidential archives, including those associated with Obama's library in Chicago, and asserts that Obama-era classified material are in fact held in the Washington, D.C. area. In the New York Times, Michelle Goldberg wrote about the absurd argument against making Trump obey the law. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond

Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu.

It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCcellvax.ca. The Atlantic's Tim Alberta described feeling nauseous watching coverage of the raid. What we must acknowledge, even those of us who believe Trump has committed crimes, in some cases brazenly so, and deserves full prosecution under the law, is that bringing him to justice could have some awful consequences, Alberto wrote.

In some sense, his words are obviously true. Trumpists are already issuing death threats against the judge who signed off on the warrant, and a Shabbat service at his synagogue was reportedly canceled because of the security risk, Goldberg wrote. On Thursday, an armed man tried to breach an FBI field office in Ohio, and the New York Times reported that he appeared to have attended a pro-Trump rally in Washington the night before the January 6th attack on the Capitol. The former president relishes his ability to stir up a mob. It's part of what makes him so dangerous, Goldberg said. We already know, however, that the failure to bring Trump to justice for his company's alleged financial chicanery and his alleged sexual assault, for obstructing Robert Mueller's special

counsel investigation and turning the presidency into a squalid influence-peddling operation, for trying to steal an election and encouraging an insurrection, has been disastrous. What has strengthened Trump has not been prosecution but impunity, an impunity that some of those who stormed the Capitol thought erroneously applied to them. Trump's mystique is built on his defiance of rules that bind everyone else. He is reportedly motivated to run for president again in part because the office will protect him from prosecution. If we don't want the presidency to license crime sprees, we should allow presidents to be indicted, not accept some dubious norm that ex-presidents shouldn't be. In the Washington Post, Matt Bayh said we may never know the contents of

the documents, but we can see Trump's defense already. These documents can't be classified, Trump and his allies are saying, because he unilaterally declassified them at some point, even if the feds still say they're classified, Bayh wrote. It's like he carries around a magic declassification wand. He's Harry Potter in the House of Treason. Let's get a few things straight. If you're president, as I understand it, you do have the right to declassify whatever documents you want, but there's a process for doing so. You're supposed to submit those documents to the appropriate agencies for review, and then they must be formally categorized as declassified. This should go without saying, but since we're not exactly killing it on basic civics

these days, let me add that former presidents can't declassify anything. That would be like Bill Clinton trying to retroactively issue a pardon, Bai said. By the way, if you are wondering just how desperate the once intellectually vibrant conservative movement has become, consider one Charles Stimson of the Heritage Foundation, who told NBC News that there's a rich debate about whether or not a document is declassified if a president has decided but not communicated it outside of his own head. Really? And where's this rich debate on presidential telepathy taking place? Exactly. The Stranger Things fan site? In Trump's worldview, he acquired the office and the

generals and the state secrets, just as he'd once acquired the Eastern Airlines shuttle, and this whole idea that he was privileged to serve was a bunch of deep state nonsense. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that he saw himself as an American Putin, elected perhaps, but governing at the will of some stronger current than the public's fleeting favor. All right, that is it for the left and the right's take, which brings us to my take. To recap the shifting story of former President Trump. First, he claimed he was cooperating with government agents who entered his home, and they could have just asked for whatever documents they wanted. Then, after a warrant suggested the FBI had recovered classified material, Trump claimed the agents had planted evidence. Then, he claimed that all materials at Mar-a-Lago had been declassified due to a standing order to declassify documents. Then, he claimed the material was protected by attorney-client privilege, and he wanted it back.

Then, he claimed that high-profile Democrats like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had also mishandled classified documents, but faced no consequences. There is no evidence Obama did any such thing. Clinton, obviously, is a different matter. None of this really fits together. It's typical of Trump, who is well-known for blitzing the media with whatever ideas or excuses come to mind anytime he missteps, as if he's testing talking points in real time before settling on one. The result among Republicans is something rather funny, where their talking points have to match his, but since the talking points shift so rapidly and unexpectedly, they're often caught flat-footed. Many Republicans were still hammering the unjustified raid talking point after Trump had long moved on to what about Hillary and Obama.

The most specific defenses Trump has put out there have also been some of the weakest. Yes, a president can declassify documents, but as conservative columnist Philip Klein noted, the idea that Trump had some kind of standing order to declassify all documents is patently absurd. It would mean every document Trump ever took to Mar-a-Lago was automatically declassify all documents is patently absurd. It would mean every document Trump ever took to Mar-a-Lago was automatically declassified, which would itself be an even more egregiously dangerous action than what we already know about now. Trump, of course, knows all this. He literally signed a law that makes removing or retaining classified documents a felony. That same law could now put Citizen Trump in a whole lot of hot water.

I also find the comparison to Hillary Clinton a bit wanting. No matter how you feel about the outcome, there are good arguments she should have been prosecuted. Clinton's case was fundamentally different. She was accused of transmitting classified documents on a private email server. Trump, best we can tell, is being accused of taking physical documents from the White House to his private residence and then lying to investigators that all those documents had been handed over. Clinton faced one charge. Trump appears to be facing three. He also appears to be under scrutiny for obstruction of justice. Again, regardless of how you feel, stories about her email server first broke in 2013 and continued until, well, apparently now.

The media frenzy was so obsessive and non-stop that But Her Emails became a meme. It lasted for three years leading up to the 2016 election. One could argue it has lasted for nine years and is ongoing. Clinton was investigated and cleared by the FBI and the Justice Department Inspector General. She was also investigated by numerous partisan congressional committees and the State Department. Reporting on her activities was extensive, and we know very clearly what happened. As far as we know, Trump's investigation is just the beginning, and we still know very little about what documents were in his possession or why. Of course, Clinton also paid a very obvious price. Many pollsters believe Comey's public updates on the investigation

are one big reason she lost the 2016 election. I happen to think she lost for being a very bad candidate. But still, remember, we're just beginning week two of this fracas and we can stand to get a lot more information before we start saying that Clinton got off and Trump got screwed. If we want the Hillary standard, as David French said, that's nearly a decade of news coverage and a half dozen different entities investigating this for years on end. Now, that's not to say with certainty that nothing is amiss here. I'd say the most plausible theory, based on currently available evidence and Trump's public statements, is that Trump had highly sensitive documents in

his possession and he had not been forthright with the FBI or DOJ about what those documents were. I just don't think the FBI would risk this predictable blowback without a strong case, and I think Merrick Garland's reputation as a careful, risk-averse law enforcement official is well-earned. Hence, the search and seizure was signed off on by his office. However, I also think it is plausible to suggest there was some phishing going on here. Trump obviously is in hot water for other reasons. Perhaps he gave the FBI an easy excuse to search his property and rifle through his stuff, and the FBI, wanting to shore up its investigation into January 6th, took the opportunity to seize as much evidence as it could.

Pretending this isn't plausible would require ignoring 100 years of FBI doing exactly that to everyone, from prolific politicians to drug dealers. Obviously, we'll know if that's the case when we see how the FBI uses this evidence to prosecute what crimes, if any, but that could be months away. As Michelle Goldberg said, Trump shouldn't be prosecuted for politics, obviously, but he also can't be spared because of politics either. We've seen serious consequences, criminal, political, and forthcoming for mishandling classified documents, whether it was one single document or thousands, from Reality Winner to Edward Snowden to Julian Assange to David Petraeus to Sandy Berger and yes, to Hillary Clinton. Trump can't and shouldn't be above such scrutiny.

There's still a lot we don't know, and I do think it looks a lot worse for Trump today than it did five days ago, but it's still far too early to fiend his victimhood or declare his guilt. Alright, that is it for my take on today's main story, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from an anonymous reader in Topton, Pennsylvania, who said, I've read that the IRS just spent $750,000 on ammunition and additional monies on guns. Does the IRS have its own internal police force? If so, for what purpose? Whom does it report to? And then, who does that person report to? How is this armed force deployed? What are the citizens' rights if confronted with them? Are there any other

non-military, non-police federal government agencies that have their own internal armed forces? So, yes, the IRS has its own police force in its criminal investigation division. It's called the IRS Criminal Investigation, the IRS-CI. It was established in 1919, and yes, they have guns. Those special agents, there are about 2,200 of them, tend to investigate crimes like money laundering and cybercrime. They are the agents currently investigating Russian oligarchs and seizing yachts. Yes, they spend about $725,000 on ammunition this year, which was actually less than some in recent years. None of this is really new,

for whatever it's worth. The agency is pretty famous for seizing Al Capone and even solving the Lindbergh kidnapping. The agency operates at the discretion of the IRS, which is a bureau within the United States Department of Treasury, which functions under the executive branch of the federal government. And yes, there are many, many other non-military, non-police federal government agencies that are armed. Basically every other major federal agency has some kind of armed special agents. Even the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Postal Service, and the Department of Transportation, to name just a few. You can see a full list with a link in today's newsletter. Alright, that is it for your questions answered, which brings us to today's story that matters.

School districts across America are doing everything they can to recruit more teachers, according to Axios. Burnout, low pay, and ever-increasing demands has caused a teacher shortage. Now, financial incentives and suspensions of licensing requirements are ramping up across the country to court teachers. Des Moines Public Schools is offering a $50,000 incentive to keep school staff around. Florida is issuing temporary teaching certificates to veterans who haven't earned bachelor's degrees. A Dallas school district is setting aside $51 million for salary increases. Axios has the story. There's a link to it in today's newsletter. There's a link to it in today's newsletter. All right, next up is our numbers section. The percentage of Americans who now say they view both the Republican and Democratic parties

unfavorably is 27%. The percentage who said that in 2018 was just 18%. And the percentage who said that in 1994 was just 4%. The percentage of voters who strongly or somewhat approve of the FBI search of Trump is 49%. The percentage who strongly or somewhat disapprove is 37%. The percentage who said they didn't know or had no opinion was 13%. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day story. Tom Gorzinski hasn't been a barber for 23 years, but that hasn't stopped him from dishing out haircuts. The 87-year-old set up a makeshift salon in the basement of a senior living co-op. Now he's offering quote-unquote free haircuts to residents every Tuesday, but with one ask,

to make a donation to Arm in Africa, a Minnesota-based organization to support poor communities in South Africa. The organization provides food, healthcare, and educational opportunities. Gorzinski says he has raised more than $10,000 in five years. The Washington Post has the story, and there's a link to it in today's newsletter. All right, everybody. That is it for the podcast today. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to readtangle.com slash membership

and become a subscriber. That is the best way to keep this podcast going. You can also click some of the links in our podcast description to become a Tangle monthly supporter on Anchor, drop something in our tip jar. All that stuff is really good. We'll be right back here tomorrow, same time.

Peace. Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle's social media manager, Magdalena Bokova, who also helped create our logo. The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn and music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our content archives at www.readtangle.com. We'll see you next time. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu,

a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season?

Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.