There was nothing stolen (passports or anything else) during the legal search of Mar-a-Lago
By islander August 16, 2022 2:28 pm Category: Law (0.0 from 0 votes)
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Like Marcy Wheeler said,
"At 12:49ET yesterday, the head of DOJ’s espionage section, Jay Bratt, informed Trump’s lawyers that the Agents who conducted the search of Mar-a-Lago had seized two expired passports and his still-active diplomatic passport; he invited someone to come get them after 2.
Later in the day, the former President went on his shitty website and claimed that the FBI, which attempted to return the passports within a week, had “stole” them.
The search worked from classified documents outward. The FBI was permitted to take any box that had a classified document in it, and any boxes stored where boxes storing classified documents were stashed.
Any physical documents with classification markings, along with any containers/boxes (including any other contents) in which such documents are located, as well as any other containers/boxes that are collectively stored or found together with the aforementioned documents and containers/boxes;
So if Trump stored his diplo passport in the leather-bound box where he stored the TS/SCI documents he stole, the FBI would have taken it under the search protocols. The same would happen if his expired passports were in a box in the storage closet where he stored his other stolen classified documents.
As the FBI explained in a statement, this is how it works.
In executing search warrants, the FBI follows search and seizure procedures ordered by courts, then returns items that do not need to be retained for law enforcement purposes.
And because Trump is a privileged white collar criminal suspect, he was lucky enough to get things that are out of scope immediately, rather than months later.
Unsurprisingly, then, Trump took an example of the FBI being diligent and used it to gin up outrage.
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