The Mar-a-Lago Affidavit: Even WSJ Doesn’t Think It Justifies the Raid | CLIP | Larry Elder

Well, the affidavit that supported the warrant that caused the raid on Mar-a-Lago has been relieved, although it's heavily redacted, so I'm not quite sure exactly what's in it. But I want to go through an opinion piece written by the Wall Street Journal. The reason this is important is because the Wall Street Journal has turned against Donald Trump. Initially, they supported him, but because of January 6th and other things, they have turned against Donald Trump. It's a Rupert Murdoch-owned publication, as is Fox News. So it's a very interesting development that the Wall Street Journal did a massive, massive editorial where they excoriated Donald Trump for January 6th and for other things that they deemed to be misbehavior. Here's what they wrote, however, after the affidavit was turned over. The Mar-a-Lago affidavit, is that all there is? The redacted 38 pages add to the evidence that the FBI search really was all about a dispute over documents. And then they defend Donald Trump's behavior, since it's impossible to disclose exactly what's happened because so much of this is redacted. But given the affidavit and the attachments, this really does, the Wall Street Journal says, seem to boil down to an incident, a disagreement over the handling of classified documents. A disagreement that the FBI had when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had an unsecured server in her basement that we talked about before, where she sent and received documents that were classified, although she denied it at first, and where she sent and received documents that were stamped as classified, although she denied that at first. And the Wall Street Journal says, The filing contains no suggestion of any greater changes or larger investigations, other than a dispute over his handling of the documents. Staff appears to have been sloppy since the Wall Street Journal, even Cavalier, in storing the documents. Classified records were found mixed in boxes with newspapers, magazines, printed news articles, photos, miscellaneous printouts, notes, and presidential correspondent, the affidavit says. But it fans suspicion that the important documents were still floating around the house. Put another way, says the Wall Street Journal, the FBI thought Trump was behaving badly, quote, as he so often does, close quote, says the Wall Street Journal. But here is the money line, quote, but that didn't mean the FBI and the DOJ had to resort to a warrant and federal agent 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 as it most certainly did. Instead, they could have gone to a district court and sought an order for the proper handling and storage of documents. It surely would have been executed, says the Wall Street Journal. If Mr. Trump then failed to comply, he could have been held in contempt. But that's not what happened. The Wall Street Journal says, and I'm quoting him, it's hard to believe that a dispute over documents would yield a criminal indictment. AG Merrick Garland would have to explain to the public why Mr. Trump's behavior was so much more nefarious than other cases of mishandled documents, close quote. And then they refer to several of them, including Sandy Berger. We talked about him. Sandy Berger was the national security advisor under Bill Clinton. And during congressional hearings over whether or not Bill Clinton could have and should have done some more things to have stopped 9-11, Sandy Berger was in the National Archives stealing documents, putting them in his pants, got a slap on the wrist, quote. And Hillary got off with a sanctimonious lecture from the then FBI director, James Comey, close quote, says the Wall Street Journal. And they conclude with this, we aren't defending Mr. Trump's behavior in any of this. He brings much of this trouble on himself. But his political enemies make it worse when they break political norms themselves, referring to the FBI DOJ. They also helped Mr. Trump by making him into a political martyr. If you're going to indict former president, you better have him dead to rights on something bigger than mishandling documents, end of quote, says the Wall Street Journal. Here is what Trump's lawyer said. Yeah, I learned that we were right, that this is, again, another political witch hunt, that they're ignoring the fact that the Presidential Records Act protects the president and allows him to have the ultimate authority to declassify things. And they blacked out anything that would be relevant. Frankly, there is nothing that's relevant. You know what I learned from this, Jesse, that this was about documents, the same documents that NARA and our attorneys on the ground that were handling this had been cooperating and working with the DOJ to get to NARA. Do you know that the Presidential Records Act doesn't even have a fine or penalty in place because it's a cooperative working together scenario for any president, except you're allowed to put it in your sock drawer, smash emails and hide it in your crotch if you're a Democrat. Referring to Sandy Berger, or some people refer to him Sandy Burglar and Hillary Clinton. Alan Dershowitz, just as I, had made a prediction. His prediction is that the DOJ will not invite Trump after he saw this affidavit. Quote, I'm going to make a prediction here, Dershowitz said. If no more evidence comes out, based on what's in the unredacted portions of this affidavit, President Trump will not be indicted. I don't think Garland is going to indict him for technical violations of these kinds of statutes that look very similar to what happened to Hillary Clinton. I think the same standard has to apply to a Republican candidate as to a Democrat candidate, end of quote, says Alan Dershowitz. And again, the portion of the Espionage Act that Hillary allegedly broke did not require a finding of intent. Yet James Comey does his presentation, outlines her behavior as sloppy, reckless. The statute only requires the behavior to be grossly negligent. And clearly she met that standard. And then at the end of his presentation, he says, but she lacked the intent to violate the statute. Intent is not even an element that's required in the statute. And according to the affidavit that we've seen, the unredacted portions anyway, national security was not cited by the DOJ as reasons for the redaction. Now, I want to turn to what Joe Biden said. Joe Biden at a campaign stop said this, and I'm quoting, I still haven't seen any video or audio of it. So this is a quote. This is Biden referring to Donald Trump. What we're seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of extreme MAGA philosophy. It's not just Trump. It's the entire philosophy that underpins the, I'm going to say something. It's like semi-fascism, end of quote. Now I'm going to say something. I looked up fascism. Fascism is a far-right authoritarian ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition. We're going to talk later on in this program about forcible suppression of the Hunter Biden story. The FBI leaned on Facebook to do that. We'll talk about that a little bit later on, but this business of authoritarianism. Speaking of semi-fascism, I got a question for you. What do you call a president who, with a stroke of a pen, illegally goes around Congress and forgives the student debt of some people and not debt of other people? What do you call that? And not only that, transfers the burden of this debt forgiveness from rich people to non-rich people. What do you call that? Is there a word for that? I'm thinking of a word. I'm looking for a word. Semi-fascism, if not outright fascism.