Tangle - The Mar-a-Lago affidavit.

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

On Friday, the government released a 38-page affidavit related to the search of Donald Trump's residence. Plus, a question about PPP forgiveness vs. student loan forgiveness.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+. Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. 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, not all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the Mar-a-Lago affidavit, some of the information we got from the release that happened on Friday

about the search of former President Trump's residence in Florida. Before we jump in though, as always, we'll start off with some quick hits. First up, two Florida residents were convicted in a plot to steal the diary of Joe Biden's daughter and sell it to the conservative group Project Veritas for $40,000. Number two, Abbott will resume producing Similac, its most popular baby formula, at a Michigan plant after a six-month pause. Number three, the U.S. Navy sailed two warships through the Taiwan Strait on Sunday despite Chinese warnings. 4. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank will continue to raise interest rates until inflation is under control.

5. California regulators approved a plan to phase out the sales of gas-only powered vehicles by 2035. The rules do not apply to the used car market and do not prevent people from owning gas-powered cars. Number six and a bit of breaking news here, due to a fuel leak, NASA has canceled the launch of its Artemis mission, which was supposed to send an unmanned rocket to the moon this morning. The continuing legal battle over the FBI raid at former President Trump's Florida home. In order for the FBI to get that warrant to search President Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, they needed to convince a judge that there was some probable cause to believe that there was evidence of a crime. On Friday, the affidavit used by the FBI to obtain a search warrant was made public. After the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, allies of Donald Trump insisted that the action itself

was politically motivated. They claimed that if the feds really wanted those documents, all they had to do was ask. the affidavit contained the Federal Bureau of Investigation's justification for its search of the former president's home. The Justice Department argued in court to keep the affidavit sealed, but several news outlets and Trump's legal team called for a release of the affidavit. In the unusual release of such a document, which follows the extraordinarily unusual search of a former president's home, a federal judge approved heavy redactions, including the identities of witnesses and agents who signed the affidavit and conducted the search, as well as the strategy, direction, scope, sources, and methods of the investigation. 24 of the 38 pages were partially or fully redacted, leaving many questions unanswered

about the cause of the search. However, the affidavit, along with the bits of news we've learned since the last time we covered the search, has shed some new light on the investigation. The search of Trump's home came after a dispute with the National Archives about boxes of documents he had taken to the residence after leaving the White House. Earlier this year, when the National Archives finally took the boxes and reviewed them, 14 of the 15 boxes were found to have contained documents that had been classified, 14 of the 15 boxes were found to have contained documents that had been classified, including 184 unique documents bearing classification markings,

67 documents marked as confidential, 92 documents marked as secret, and 25 documents marked as top secret, the government's most sensitive ranking. Some of those documents could contain sensitive information about intelligence agents or foreign nationals who spy for the U.S., the affidavit indicates. That discovery led the National Archives to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department. In the affidavit, it is noted that those boxes contained benign material like newspapers and magazine clippings mixed in with a lot of classified records and other miscellaneous records. The haphazard handling and mixing of the

materials prompted the FBI to believe there were more classified documents in Trump's possession and further justified their search. Trump has filed a lawsuit alleging the FBI took items that were not authorized in the search warrant, including photos and his passports. The Justice Department has already returned the passports. On Saturday, a Florida judge said she had preliminary intent to approve Trump's request for a special master, an independent third party commonly retained in similar situations, to review the material taken from his home and remove items that are privileged. The U.S. government has to reply by Tuesday to litigation calling for the special master, and the judge, U.S. District Attorney Judge Eileen Cannon, said she'll hear arguments on Thursday. The government is also mandated to

submit a receipt of the materials they collected by Tuesday. The affidavit also revealed that the FBI believed the search would likely find evidence of obstruction in addition to other classified material, though the section on their cause for believing they'd discover evidence of obstruction was mostly redacted. Trump's team also offers an explanation in the affidavit, which states that the president has the absolute authority to declassify documents. Trump's lawyers point to a January 19, 2021 memo in which he declassified documents related to the Russia investigation. However, it's unclear if materials related to that investigation are what the FBI seized. While it's true Trump can declassify documents as president, there is a specific process for doing so, and so far there is no

documentary evidence that Trump declassified the documents in question through that process. Some of the charges Trump could be facing also do not necessitate that the documents in question still have their classification status, making it difficult to parse how the declassification would change his defense. Today, we're going to take a look at some arguments from the right and the left about what we The left argues that the evidence appears damning and Trump could be facing an indictment. Many say it's clear the Justice Department was justified in its search of Mar-a-Lago. Others argue Trump supporters may regret calling for the affidavit's release. The Washington Post editorial board said it is more tantalizing than it is revealing. But what is visible, despite pages of blacked-out text, makes the Justice Department appear thoughtful and deliberate, and the former president quite

the opposite, the board said. The National Archives initially asked for the documents allegedly in Mr. Trump's possession, which needed to be archived per the Presidential Records Act in May of last year, and continued asking for more than seven months, at which point the Trump team provided 15 boxes. Next, when the archives discovered classified markings on some documents, Mr. Trump resisted the FBI's efforts to review the material the Post has reported, and refused to hand over any additional classified information despite a grand jury subpoena. Trump's defenders have slammed the FBI's search as aggressive and unwarranted. What has come out since, including on Friday, suggests the search was hardly capricious, they wrote.

Instead, all available evidence suggests it was a thoughtful choice made after other options had been exhausted. Along the way, the affidavit showed that the Justice Department considered the dubious defense from Mr. Trump's allies that all documents were declassified and that keeping them at Mar-a-Lago was therefore legal. Read together, these facts should help assuage concerns that Attorney General Merrick Garland embarked on an ill-considered prosecutorial frolic when he sought to search Mar-a-Lago, though this reality is unlikely to stop the flow of reckless rhetoric from Trump acolytes. Meanwhile, those taking a more level-headed approach should continue to do what they've done so far.

Wait. There was much we didn't know before this affidavit was unsealed. There is much we still don't know now. In the New York Times, Andrew Weissman said the affidavit confirms the Justice Department was righteous in its decision to search Mar-a-Lago. Mr. Trump knows the answers to the most important unanswered questions. What material did he take from the White House? Why did he take it? What had he done with it? And what was he planning to do with it? There is nothing that prevented him for over a year from publicly answering those questions. He surely has not remained silent because the answers are exculpatory.

Above all, the redacted affidavit and an accompanying brief explaining the redactions, which was released on Friday, reveals more evidence of a righteous criminal case related to protecting information vital to our nation's security, Weissman wrote. I can assure you, based on my experience as the general counsel of the FBI, that although there may be too much information deemed sensitive at the lowest level of classification, that was never the case with top-secret material. The markings for top-secret and sensitive compartmented information indicates the highest level of security we have. Those levels protect what is rightly described as the crown jewel of the national security community.

Especially with information classified at that level, the government doesn't get to pick and choose to defend the nation's top secrets based on politics. It doesn't matter if the person in question is a Democrat or Republican, a former president, a secretary of state, or Edward Snowden. These documents belong to the government, and their having been taken away posed a clear risk to our national security, Weissman said. The release of the redacted affidavit proves further clarity on why Attorney General Merrick Garland took the extraordinary step of approving the search of certain locations at Mar-a-Lago. The short version is that nothing else had worked and top-secret

information was at stake. In CNN, Norm Eisen and Shan Wu said that Trump supporters should be very careful what they wish for. The affidavit specifies three possible crimes, prohibiting the concealment or removal of government records, which is punishable by up to three years in prison, prohibiting the deliberate retention or transmission of national defense information in line with the Espionage Act and is punishable by up to 10 years in prison, and obstructing a federal investigation which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison, they wrote. The affidavit, by specifically citing Section E of the Espionage Act statute, reveals the government's theory of the case here, at least so far.

That section pertains to the unauthorized possession of national defense information, knowledge that it could be harmful to the United States, or a benefit of foreign nation and willfully passing it on to people who weren't entitled to have it or refusing to give it back to those who were. All that, certainly, is probable cause and beyond of a crime under the Section 793e theory that we learned about for the first time in the affidavit they wrote. But, of course, that was only the beginning of the alleged misconduct because it's clear from the affidavit that wrangling continued over additional documents that were retained. It was much uglier than Trump's legal team's characterization of a cooperative relationship. Their pushback appears to have been based on the nonsensical argument

that the president has a magic wand of automatic declassification authority. That, of course, is not the law, but it is also beside the point. That is another important revelation in the affidavit. The second footnote in the document expressly states that the mishandling of national defense information is what is here under investigation. Classification often applies when national defense information is involved, but the government does not need to prove that a single line was classified to prosecute or convict Trump. Alright, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. Many on the right are asking if the only crime really is the mishandling of classified documents.

Others suggest the affidavit shows there is little besides a documents dispute. Some believe the affidavit contains signs Trump won't be indicted. The Wall Street Journal editorial board said, We can't help but wonder, is that it? This is why agents descended on a former president's residence like they would a mob boss? It's possible the redactions in the 38-page document release contain some undisclosed bombshell. But, given the contours of what the affidavit and attachments reveal, this really does seem to boil down to a fight over the handling of classified documents, the board said.

The affidavit's long introduction and other unredacted paragraphs all point to concern by the FBI and the National Archives with the documents Mr. Trump retained at Mar-a-Lago and his lack of cooperation in not returning all that the feds wanted. A separate filing making the case for the redactions, also released Friday, focused on the need for witness and agent protection from being publicly identified. That filing also contains no suggestion of any greater charges or a larger investigation than the dispute over his handling of the documents. As always with Mr. Trump, he seems to have been his own worst enemy in this dispute. He and his staff appear to have been sloppy, even cavalier, in storing the

documents. Classified records found in boxes were mixed in with newspapers, magazines, printed news articles, photos, miscellaneous printouts, notes, and the presidential correspondence, the affidavit says. This fans suspicion that important documents were still floating around the house, where bad actors hanging around the Mar-a-Lago resort might pilfer them, the board said. But that didn't mean the FBI and Justice Department had to resort to a warrant and a federal agent's search that they knew would be redolent of criminal behavior. They had to suggest probable cause of criminal acts to get their extravagant warrant, which they knew would create a political firestorm.

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+.

In The Hill, Kevin Brock said it's clear the government has no case against Trump. First, the affidavit confirmed that the FBI's investigation was triggered in January 2022 at the request of the National Archives, which wanted certain documents, especially classified documents, that it considered to be presidential records to be turned over to it by Trump. Second, from what I've seen, I don't believe the affidavit articulates how a federal law was or is being broken. For those who hold out hope that the affidavit's redacted sections law was or is being broken. For those who hold out hope that the affidavit's redacted sections fill that gap, there's almost no chance that they do, he

wrote. As to the first point, this matter is, as suspected, nothing more than a document dispute that was chugging along appropriately as a negotiation behind the scenes and apparently making some progress. I don't see anything in the affidavit asserting a refusal by Trump to cooperate. Any clinging hope in certain quarters that the affidavit possessed pulverizing cause to believe Trump was engaged in a truly serious federal violation can, I think, be considered dashed. The pipe dream that Trump was engaged in espionage, actively providing secrets to an enemy, I think is as fanciful as the Steele dossier's Moscow hotel bed reverie. And no, I don't believe a smoking gun of espionage or something equally shocking will be in the redacted sections. If the FBI had that, it would have fronted that in the unredacted portions,

he wrote. The affidavit does a reasonable job of establishing cause to believe Trump possessed a range of classified materials, or at least once classified materials, and that those materials were located in his residence. But that's not all that's needed in this case in particular. A criminal violation of those statutes only exists if it can be established that the person being investigated was not authorized to possess, store, transfer, or copy those documents. This is an easy element to establish against anyone in America, except one person. In the New York Post, Andrew McCarthy said the affidavit was so thoroughly redacted, the exercise was pointless.

DOJ has given us nothing about the monumental decision to execute a search warrant at the home of a former American president, unprecedented in U.S. history. In the absence of information, we are left with speculation, McCarthy said. It makes little sense that Justice Department officials would be fighting so hard against revealing the sensitive information in the affidavit if they intended to prosecute. If the department indicted Trump, the affidavit would be disclosed to the defense and become public in short order. And if the DOJ officials intended to prosecute, they could have charged Trump already. After all, if they had probable cause

of crimes justifying a search, then they had probable cause of crimes justifying charges, and the case only got stronger after the search of Mar-a-Lago, which yielded more classified documents. To the contrary, the order to keep the affidavit largely redacted, to protect witness identities and to shield the substance of the sensitive information that was seized at Mar-a-Lago makes perfect sense if the Justice Department does not plan to indict the former president, he said. In the non-indictment scenario, the government accomplishes the goals of a. getting its top-secret information back, b. assessing the damage that may have been caused by the mishandling of that intelligence, you really need to have the classified documents to

do that, C, collecting the rest of the presidential records Trump has been hoarding at Mar-a-Lago that, by law, are property of the government and should be maintained by the National Archives. And D, continuing to conceal the now-redacted portions of the warrant affidavit that, if revealed, could expose witnesses, reveal methods of collecting intelligence, and signal to hostile governments the kinds of sensitive U.S. defense secrets that may have been exposed to untrustworthy people who might be willing to sell them. All right, that is it for the left and the right's take, which brings us to my take. In our first two newsletters about the search of Mar-a-Lago,

I made a few broad points. I said, first of all, if it's just a matter of mishandling classified documents, an indictment would blow up in the government's face. I said that there appears to be good cause for the search based on the evidence available. And I said we still know very little and need to wait for more details. The affidavit adds some of those important details. My most confident takeaway are that Trump mishandled classified documents and that his team was not nearly as cooperative as he made it seem. As I wrote a few weeks ago, Trump has not denied inappropriately holding classified documents. Instead, his whole evolving response went from unjustified search, to they planted evidence, to everything was

declassified, to it's privileged material, to, well, other people mishandled classified evidence too. That's not the consistent and convincing response of someone confident in their innocence. Add to that the fact that so many highly sensitive materials were already recovered in January and were so haphazardly put together when agents found them, and it's hard to be reassured of their security. Still, the question is what happens now? One plausible theory is that there is no pending indictment of the former president and that this was just a matter of getting documents back. Based on what we know, if that's where this ends, I'm not sure the Justice Department and the FBI have much more explaining to do. The fact that Trump was holding hundreds

of sensitive documents and made it so difficult for the government to recover them is a reasonable cause for the search. As we explained before, Trump does have broad latitude to declassify documents, but that doesn't mean he can skip the official process for doing so and simply declare anything he wants is declassified. That process is never just a command during any presidency. Even if that were true, though, some of the alleged crimes here would still be crimes, even if the documents had been declassified. All this is to say, my early inclinations are that the search and recovery of documents was justified. However, if the Justice Department is actually planning to indict Trump,

they're going to need a lot more. They'll have to clearly distinguish how this mishandling of classified documents was more serious than, say, Hillary Clinton's. Clinton paid the price for her private email server. She faced a decade of media scrutiny, during which she was investigated and cleared by the FBI and the Justice Department Inspector General, faced numerous congressional committee investigations, and was investigated by the State Department. But she was never indicted. In this case, in order to warn an indictment of Trump, the redacted material would probably need to make it clear that he was intending to misuse the documents and understood he was breaking the law. Or, perhaps most likely, given the signs of potential obstruction charges, they'll need to show that Trump clearly was attempting to

conceal or destroy government records. They may very well do one or all of those things, but they haven't yet. From the 30,000 foot view, here's the reality since the search happened. Nothing that has come out looks good for Trump. All signs, at a minimum, point to his guilt in mishandling highly classified documents. And yet, there is a great risk of political blowback given the reality of doing something as unprecedented as searching the home of a former president or charging him. However much we want the law to apply equally to all citizens, it doesn't, and it never has. Specifically in the case of handling classified documents, we have seen a huge disparity in how

people are charged. In this case, the actual law is even more complex when the person in question has the highest possible authority to manage those documents, as Trump did. So, if there really is an indictment coming for Trump, which I'm not confident there is, the government is going to need a lot more than what we have now to convince the public that criminal charges are justified. If there is no indictment coming, and the true purpose was to get these documents back and assess the damage of Trump's mishandling of them, then it's possible this saga is closer to an end than we all thought. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from Jeff in Fairfax, Virginia. Jeff said, since your take here is

disagreeing with the student loan forgiveness, I'm curious how you feel about those comparing it to all the PP loans that were forgiven. Student loan forgiveness is less money, more direct, and helps those with lower incomes way more than those did. For the I-don't-want-my-taxes-funding-it-since-I-don't-benefit crowd, not sure I see how giving millions to Kushner, Kardashians, Jay-Z, etc. helps most people. The inflation argument did not appear to be happening then. So, Jeff, I think this is actually kind of a silly comparison, and I'm surprised so many people, including the White

House, are kind of running with it. For starters, the PPP program did a tremendous amount of good for working class and lower income people. Yes, there was a ton of fraud, waste, and some rich people getting money they didn't need, but it also saved millions of jobs. Assessing precisely how many at what cost has proven very difficult, but the most recent lower end estimates have the PPP program saving about 1.98 million jobs. Even economists who are broadly critical about PPP estimate it saved 1.4 million to 3.2 million jobs. My wife, for instance, kept her job at a production company that lost all of its business because of COVID restrictions thanks to PPP loans. So the PPP loans were designed to be

one-time life support for our economy, but many have been overly large and yes, resulted in massive amounts of fraud. The primary criticisms of student debt forgiveness, however, are A, that it may end up increasing the cost of tuition and the amount of money students borrow, B, it could increase inflationary pressures, and C, it does nothing to fix the system for funding higher education. None of these criticisms can be directly related to PPP. The PPP mostly did what it was supposed to do, and you didn't see the inflation argument because it didn't come at a time when we were battling historically high inflation. That being said, PPP loans did face a lot of criticism for being too broad and wasting

funds, which is a kind of criticism that student debt cancellation is also facing. So I don't think it's accurate at all to pretend PPP was simply rubber-stamped and beloved while student debt cancellation is getting criticism. Both face pushback on how the relief was given, though the criticisms over their justifications differ greatly. Finally, we'll see about the cost comparison. PPP came in at about $800 billion, a huge amount which will mostly not be recouped since most of those loans have been forgiven. Without getting into future changes to borrower caps or Pell Grants, student debt cancellation could cost up to $519 billion, according to Pen Wharton's budget model. But that's not the whole picture. Unlike the pandemic, the conditions causing student debt won't go away, and debt

forgiveness could exceed $1 trillion over 10 years depending on the behavioral changes of borrowers and colleges, likely resulting in even worse conditions for the next generation of students. Alright, that is it for your questions answered, which brings us to our under-the-radar section. Increasingly, anxious and depressed teens are being prescribed multiple powerful psychiatric drugs, many of them untested for use in tandem. Many of the drugs prescribed have never been approved in people under the age of 18, and prescriptions of antidepressants for teenagers rose 38% from 2015 to 2019, compared to a 12% rise in adults. Psychiatrists and other clinicians emphasize that psychiatric

drugs properly prescribed can be vital in stabilizing adolescents and saving the lives of suicidal teens, the New York Times reports. But these experts caution such medications are too readily doled out, often as an easy alternative to therapy that families cannot afford or find or aren't interested in. The Times has the story on this worrisome phenomenon, and there's a link in today's newsletter. All right, next up is our numbers section. Trump's net favorability rating, according to NBC News, is negative 18. Biden's net favorability rating, according to NBC News, is negative 8.

Trump's net favorability rating in the swing state of Wisconsin, according to Fox News, is negative 20. Biden's net favorability rating in the swing state of Wisconsin, according to Fox News, is negative 10. The percentage of Americans who said they had smoked marijuana in the last week was 16%, according to a new survey from Gallup. The percentage of Americans who said they had smoked a cigarette in the last week was 11%, the first time that number has been lower than marijuana. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day section. Last week, the White House updated its policy on federally funded research, making the results of such studies free to the

public right away. Up until now, researchers who get federal funding have been allowed to publish exclusively in academic journals for up to one year, which effectively paywalls their work. But because taxpayers fund that research, this has been a point of contention. Now, the White House is dropping those paywalls, saying it hopes the move will give the public more access to scientific information more quickly. And Gadget has the story, and there's a link to it in today's newsletter. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to redangle.com slash membership and become a subscriber. Or you can just share this podcast with friends. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. 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 Diet75. 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+.