Ex-AG Barr: No ‘legitimate reason’ for Trump to have classified info

September 2, 2022

Former Attorney General Bill Barr said Friday that former President Donald Trump was “foolish” to keep classified information at his Mar-a-Lago resort and added that the 45th president’s claim that he had a standing order to declassify sensitive information would be a reckless abuse of power.

“I can’t think of a legitimate reason why they should have been — could be taken out of the government, away from the government, if they’re classified,” Barr told Fox News’ “America Reports” after a detailed inventory of property taken by FBI agents in their Aug. 8 raid of the 45th president’s Florida estate was made public by a federal judge.

“I frankly am skeptical of this claim that ‘I declassified everything,'” Barr added, “because frankly, I think it’s highly improbable. And second, if in fact, he sort of stood over scores of boxes, not really knowing what was in them and said, ‘I hereby declassify everything in here,’ that would be such an abuse and show such recklessness that it’s almost worse than taking the documents.”

The property list unsealed by US District Judge Aileen Cannon indicated that 11,179 seized government documents and photographs bore no classification markings at all.

By contrast, 54 documents removed from Mar-a-Lago were marked “SECRET,” 31 were labeled “CONFIDENTIAL” and another 18 were labeled “TOP SECRET.”

Agents also took 48 empty folders labeled with “CLASSIFIED” banners while another 42 empty folders were labeled “Return to Staff Secretary/Military Aide.” It is not clear from the inventory list why the folders were empty.

Barr also dismissed Trump’s request for a neutral third party, known as a “special master,” to go through the documents taken from his home to see if any of them were covered by attorney-client privilege.

“I think the whole idea of a special master is a bit of a red herring,” the former AG said. “The only documents that have been taken, it seems to me, that there’s a legitimate concern about keeping away from the government and insulating the government from would be documents relating to his private lawyer communications [between] him as an individual and his outside lawyers. If there’s stuff like that, fine, identify it. If there doesn’t appear to be much of it, I’m not sure you need a special master to identify it … you know, at this stage since they’ve already gone through the documents, I think it’s a waste of time.”

Barr added that even if Trump is correct that other documents taken in the raid were subject to executive privilege, those records “either belong to the government because they’re government records — even if they’re classified, even if they’re subject to executive privilege, they still belong to the government and go to the [National] Archives.

“And any other documents that were seized, like news clippings and other things that were in the boxes containing the classified information, those were seizable under the [search] warrant because they show the conditions under which the classified information was being held,” he went on.

The search warrant, unsealed Aug. 12, revealed that Trump is under investigation for potential violations of three federal laws related to removal and storage of government information, including the Espionage Act.​

“People say this was unprecedented, well it’s also unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put it in a country club, OK?” said Barr, who later added that “the facts are starting to show that [the DOJ was] being jerked around” by the former president and his legal team.

Despite his criticism of the former president, Barr said he hopes Trump is not prosecuted over the classified documents.

“It is clearly foolish, what happened, and inexplicable, but beyond that? They may well be able to make a case out here,” he said. “But then there’s an additional question: Given the fact this is a former president, given the state of the nation, and given the fact that the government has gotten its documents back, does it really make sense to bring a case as a matter of prudential judgment?

“And that’s a question that I think will turn on how clear the evidence of obstruction or deceit is,” Barr added. “If they clearly have the president moving stuff around and hiding stuff in his desk, and telling people to dissemble with the government, they may be inclined to bring that case … I hope it doesn’t happen.”

Sauce: https://nypost.com/2022/09/02/ex-ag-barr-trump-had-classified-docs-for-no-legitimate-reason/

tl;dr: Barr the swamp creature parrots swamp

It’s a bird, it’s a plane!

September 2, 2022

A flight path shows an airplane flipping off Washington state — and observers are hailing itsattention to detail, down to its sky-high “middle finger nail.”

The small, private Piper Navajo aircraft took off from Bellingham International Airport at 9:15 a.m. Monday and zig-zagged north in a pattern resembling a hand giving the middle finger on flight-tracking radar, according to the plane tracking company FlightAware.

The pilot soared at an altitude of 12,000 feet at speeds up to 250 miles per hour before landing at the same airport at 4:09 p.m., according to the flight data.

“This was impressive. The thumbnail is a flourish,” one airplane buff wrote on Reddit.com

Sauce/more: https://nypost.com/2022/09/02/flight-path-shows-plane-flipping-off-washington-state/

>>17484663

Biden is in desperate damage control less than 24-hours after demonizing half of America's voters in the most toxic presidential speech in the modern era - but this disaster cannot be walked back, writes JONATHAN BRONITSKY

September 2, 2022

Dr. Jonathan Bronitsky served as U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr's Chief Speechwriter and Senior Advisor at the U.S. Department of Justice

Less than 24-hours after delivering the darkest, most toxic presidential speech of the modern era, the Commander in Chief is trying to gaslight America to believe he didn't say what it just heard him say.

'C'mon, look guys, I don't consider any Trump supporter a threat to the country,' he told reporters Friday. 'When people voted for Donald Trump - and support him now - they weren't voting for attacking the Capitol. They weren't voting for overruling the election. They were going for a philosophy he put forward.'

Let's roll the tape back.

Here's what the president asserted Thursday evening outside Philadelphia's Independence Hall, which the White House advance team transformed into a scene straight out of Hostel - complete with blood-red uplighting and shadowed figures in the background.

The stage's backdrop looked more like the demonic spawn pool of Satan rather than the patriotic birthplace of our republic.

'Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.'

He continued, 'MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards -backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.'

Biden was not talking about a narrow slice of the Republican Party there. He was clearly referring to - and slandering - a major portion of the country that believes in the sanctity of life and steadfastly honors the traditional morality that has made America exceptional.

This wasn't a slip of the tongue.

Biden was reading prepared marks, approved at multiple levels, that perfectly echoed the rhetoric of his administration.

Consider what White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said from the podium of the White House briefing room earlier this week.

'The MAGA Republicans are the most energized part of the Republican Party,' she declared. 'That is an extreme threat to our democracy, to our freedom, to our rights… this is the most active base of the Republican Party.'

Last week, while speaking at a private Democratic fundraiser, Biden was unambiguous: 'It's not just [Donald] Trump, it's the entire philosophy that underpins the - I'm going to say something - it's like semi-fascism.'

Back in January, while attempting to cram a doomed so-called voting rights bill through Congress, Biden avowed that Republicans who opposed the massive federal takeover of the election system were akin to segregationists and the Confederacy.

'So, I ask every elected official in America, how do you want to be remembered?' he bellowed on stage at the Atlanta University Center Consortium. 'Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?'

In Philadelphia, however, Biden wasn't demonizing elected officials. He was taking square aim at regular citizens.

Sauce/more: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11174473/Biden-damage-control-demonizing-half-Americas-voters-JONATHAN-BRONITSKY.html

IRS 'mistakenly' posts names, contact numbers and financial information from 120,000 taxpayers' retirement accounts on its website thanks to human coding error

A human coding error in the IRS' system allowed confidential information from 120,000 taxpayers' retirement accounts to be published online

Among the information published were the names, contact information and finances of those who submitted 990-T forms regarding their IRAs

The mistake occurred when the new online system accidentally published the private forms with those of charities that are meant to be public

The US Treasury said an IRS employee discovered the error in recent weeks

Those affected will be contacted in the coming weeks and the agency continues to investigate the error and its online systems

September 2, 2022

The Internal Revenue Service 'mistakenly' posted the names, contact data and financial information from about 120,000 taxpayers' retirement accounts.

The US Treasury Department determined that a human coding error allowed the confidential information to be posted on the IRS' website before it was taken down, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Among the information published were the names, contact information and finances of individuals who submitted 990-T forms regarding their IRA plans.

On Friday, the Treasury assured Congress that Social Security numbers, full income information and other key pieces of financial data were not published and that those affected would be contacted in the coming weeks.

The Treasury and IRS blamed the mistake on a coding error that was implemented last year, when 990-T forms were allowed to be filed electronically.

The form is often required for individuals whose IRA earn certain types of business income within their retirement plans.

While this information is supposed to be kept private, non-profits submit the same form, and that data is meant to be open to the public.

The Treasury explained the new code in its system mixed up the 990-T forms and published the private data with the ones meant for the public.

Officials said an IRS research employee discovered the mistake in recent weeks, alerting the agency which under federal law must notify Congress whenever security incident occurs.

The mistake has triggered a broad inquiry into how the IRS maintains and publishes private and public information.

'The IRS is continuing to review this situation,' Anna Canfield Roth, the Treasury Department's acting assistant secretary for management told lawmakers in a letter.

'The Treasury Department has instructed the IRS to conduct a prompt review of its practices to ensure necessary protections are in place to prevent unauthorized data disclosures.'

The US Treasury did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com's request for comment on how the private data was up on the IRS' website.

Sauce/more: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11174547/IRS-mistakenly-posts-confidential-info-120-000-taxpayers-retirement-accounts-website.html

(this kind of mistake would NEVER make it thru "the system" and would "kick out" for error correction, into a BOOB batch aka: Batch Out Of Balance so a MANUAL BYPASS was implemented imho)

so I might have heard…

>>17484930

Another one (same horse, 3:35 min)

Andrew Card relives moments he told Tumbler..