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Fun Times in TrumpLand

WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA - APRIL 03: President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort is seen on April 03, 2019 in West Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
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August 16, 2022 1:15 p.m.
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The articles that make you feel the best are the ones to be most skeptical of. But with that said, this article in The Guardian certainly brought a smile to my face and satisfied a need for a schadenfreude fix. A federal judge will now decide whether to release some portions of the affidavit in support of the search of Mar-a-Lago. There’s the warrant and the inventory, both of which the target gets to see. It’s the affidavit that lays out why are we doing this; why is it important; what larger schemes are we investigating that requires us to go into this home and look for stuff.

The Justice Department says it should remain sealed to protect the integrity of the investigation, to safeguard witnesses and keep them talking, etc. None of that is a surprise. But according to the article the Trump team is actually eager to see it because they have no idea what the DOJ’s next move may be and are desperate to find out. Indeed, according to the article, members of the Trump team have been reaching out to reporters trying to get clues about what the DOJ is planning. The choicest claim is that the detail the FBI agents had about what was where, where things were being stored, has sent the Trump legal team into a kind of tailspin of mutual suspicion and recrimination about who the leaker is.

From the article

According to multiple sources close to Trump, suspicions initially centered on Nicholas Luna, the longtime Trump body-man who stepped back from his duties around March, and Molly Michael, the former Trump White House Oval Office operations chief, who remains on payroll but is due to soon depart.

Luna was subpoenaed by the congressional investigation into the January 6 Capitol attack but has not spoken to the FBI about this case, one of the sources said. And although Michael is slated to also leave Trump’s orbit, the source said, her departure – like Luna’s – is not acrimonious.

The focus in the middle of the week shifted to Mar-a-Lago employees and other staff at the members-only resort in Palm Beach, Florida, the sources said, seemingly in part because the FBI knew exactly which rooms and where in the rooms they needed to search.

But towards the weekend, and following the revelation that the FBI removed a leather-bound box from the property and already knew the location of Trump’s safe, scrutiny shifted once more to anyone else who had not yet been suspected – including members of Trump’s family, the sources said.

So things seem to be going great in TrumpLand, at least according to this report.

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