WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for Donald Trump met with Justice Department officials on Monday as a decision nears on whether to bring criminal charges over the handling of classified documents at the former president’s Florida estate
The Trump lawyers two weeks ago requested a meeting with Attorney General Merrick Garland to raise concerns about what they alleged was prosecutorial misconduct and overreach by the team led by special counsel Jack Smith. But a defense attorney meeting with Justice Department officials is also often used as an opportunity to try to persuade prosecutors against bringing charges in the final stages of an investigation.
It was not clear what was discussed during the meeting, but Trump, in a social media post and talk radio interview, signaled that he was prepared for the possibility that he would be charged and reiterated his attacks on the investigation.
A trio of Trump attorneys — James Trusty, John Rowley and Lindsey Halligan — exited the Justice Department headquarters in Washington on Monday morning after spending well over an hour inside. They got into a black sport utility vehicle and did not respond to reporters' questions.
Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco were not present for the meeting but special counsel Jack Smith was. The Justice Department had no comment on the meeting.
After the meeting ended, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform in capital letters: “How can DOJ possibly charge me, who did nothing wrong” when no other presidents have been charged. He referenced the investigation into his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton, which ended without criminal charges, and a separate ongoing probe into the presence of classified documents at an office and home of President Joe Biden. And he characterized it as a “witch hunt.”
He also called into the Todd Starnes radio show, where he confirmed the meeting with his lawyers and said, “Well, I can just say this: They did go in and they saw ’em and they said very unfair. No other president has ever been charged with anything like his.'"
The Trump investigation differs from both the Biden and Clinton probes, though, in that prosecutors for months have examined whether Trump or his representatives sought to obstruct their inquiry and their efforts to recover classified documents. After suspecting that not all classified documents had been turned over, the FBI in August obtained a search warrant and returned to Mar-a-Lago and recovered an additional 100 documents with classification markings.
The Mar-a-Lago investigation into the potential mishandling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, with a charging decision likely coming soon. Prosecutors have placed a broad cross-section of witnesses, including lawyers for Trump and close aides, before a grand jury.
Trump's lawyers issued a letter to House lawmakers in April that laid out possible defenses and referred to the investigation as “misguided, politically infected, and severely botched.”
Besides the Mar-a-Lago investigation, Smith is leading a separate probe into efforts by Trump and his allies to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election.
As Klaus Schwab recentlyopined, the future of global hegemony will be dependent on the mastery of avant garde technologies which were once relegated to the realm of science fiction.With that power in mind, technologies advancing artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and other pillars of the World Economic Forum's so-called fourth industrial revolution have begun to permeate into our everyday lives. Perhaps no greater example of the imperative of the technocratic elite to harness these technologies is the digital ID. The premise of an over arching digital identity as a mechanism for vast government surveillance was one of the cornerstones of the authoritarian response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Apparently, that crisis wasn't the only instance of an opportunity to beta test the tools of dystopian oppression.
The town of East Palestine, Ohio shows how deeply embedded this agenda is in the plans of the elite.Before the town entered into the public discourse by becoming the scene of one of the worst environmental disasters in US history, the biggest piece of news to come out of it appears to be another iteration of the ongoing initiative to implement digital surveillance tools into public infrastructure. In late January, East Palestine officially launched its MyID program in order to equip residents of the town and neighboring Unity Township with digital IDs. The premise was purportedly to equip emergency responders with digital health profiles of those who they would be treating. East Palestine's digital ID initiative was first announced in October 2022.
The rollout of the MyID program was vested in the East Palestine Fire Department.
"It's kind of like the old Medical Alert bracelet or old Vials of Life Program, however this is with new technology. It's a QR code that we're able to scan and it will bring up your pertinent information medically related. There is no information that anybody can take and steal your ID with. It's just for us to be able to take care of patients who aren't able to communicate with us," East Palestine Fire Chief Keith Drabick said.
The East Palestine Fire Department held a sign-up event at the town's community center this January in an effort to drive enrollment into the cloud based information system. They were was able to collect $5,000 in donation to aid in the roll out of the program to make the first 250 wearable devices available to enrollees for free. The QR codes can be affixed to a wristband or a key faub but depend on digital ID software storing a person's health information in a cloud-hosted database in either instance.
During the event, Drabick emphasized that the MyID pilot program was intended to have a limited scope narrowly pertaining to sensitive medical information of those enrolled, tacitly alluding to underlying concerns about privacy that has skeptics of digital IDs reticent about the technology. Drabick would go on to compel skeptics to explore the program despite their reservations. “Anybody that skeptical? Please come on down. Sit down, talk to us. We’ll be happy to show you everything that goes on with it. We’ll be happy to show you how secure it is.”
Despite the initiative to implement the MyID program, even the fire department officials tasked will its roll out likely could not have foreseen the devastation East Palestine would incur following a botched controlled burn of a chemical spill that has turned the small town into North America's own version of Chernobyl. However, the impetus to start a digital ID initiative preceding what would have been an unforeseen crisis is a pattern that supposed "conspiracy theorists" know all too well.
Before the hysteria surrounding COVD-19 gripped the world, an event held in collaboration between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Johns Hopkins University foreshadowing the eventual pandemic. Event 201 created a simulation to gauge the global response to a coronavirus epidemic as a means of pushing forward the very technologies at the center of the World Economic Forum's vision of the future which were also implemented in East Palestine before the watershed crisis that would alter the landscape of the town forever. One of the partners for Event 201 was ID2020, a digital ID initiative that Bill Gates was heavily invested in that served as an archetype for the vaccine passports that global NGOs and sovereign governments alike have been steadfastin attempting to implement.
The devastation in East Palestine rightfully puts an emphasis on an effective emergency response to save the 5,000 or so residents of the town from the peril they face as they are engulfed in a carcinogenic miasma which threatens their short term and long term health. While that is the understandable priority, the underlying currents of patterns which have preceded previous manufactured emergencies are putting the chemical catastrophe into a new light. First, there was the re-emergence of the 2022 film White Noise which seemingly served as a piece of predictive programming as its plot centered around the aftermath of a chemical explosion affecting a small town in Ohio. Now, the roll out of a digital ID program like that which was showcased during Event 201 raises even more questions than answers about what is really going on in East Palestine.
The Oversight Committee plans a first move on Thursday, unless the bureau hands over a copy of a document Republicans say ties the president to explosive allegations.
Even if the entire House GOP finds FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt, it’s highly unlikely that Biden's Justice Department would exercise its power to bring any criminal charges. | Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/AP Photo
House Republicans are escalating their standoff with the FBI over an unreleased document that they say ties then-Vice President Joe Biden to a “bribery scheme” — without sharing key details about the explosive allegation behind it.
The Oversight Committee will vote Thursday on holding FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress over the bureau’s decision not to give lawmakers a copy of the document, Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said Monday after a closed-door meeting with FBI officials.
“At the briefing, the FBI again refused to hand over the unclassified record to the custody of the House Oversight Committee,” Comer said. “Given the severity and the complexity of the allegations contained within this record, Congress must investigate further.”
A committee contempt vote would significantly ramp up House Republicans’ conflict with the FBI, which has faced major flak since the GOP took the majority, given the yearslong conflict between the two entities. In addition, such a move would signal a new phase of Comer’s investigation into Biden’s affairs, where Republicans hope to find an elusive direct link between the president’s decision-making and payments his family members received.
