Rep. Eric Burlison @RepEricBurlison
The mental gymnastics the media and the left are going through to ignore the Biden classified docs while simultaneously crucifying Trump is just one more example of the absurd double standards that exist today. 5:20 PM · Jan 12, 2023
You haven’t been watching/listening to the news. BTW, do YOU condemn Trump’s handling of classified documents as you have Biden’s? Be fair, Congressman.
With an I.Q. as high as yours, The mental gymnastics you must go through just to tie you shoes…
-Wait, what… They’re Velcro!?
>The mental gymnastics you must go through just to put on your shoes must be tiring
Heh.
This was then. Eric Burlison (r), August 2022:
Eric Burlison @EricBurlison
It’s disgusting how the Obama and now Biden administration have weaponized our judicial system against Trump. They investigated him and put him through hell over the bogus Steele Dossier, and now they do THIS. This swamp must be drained. These are the actions of a banana republic 5:27 AM · Aug 9, 2022
Some of the response back then:
What’s disgusting is a lawless President who escapes accountability again and again because of his money, power, and propaganda, and folks like you defending him.
You still a Trump Republican now Eric? Tik tok.
Still is, evidently.
Local man running for Congress can’t think of anything to say.
Huh? The bits of your tweet that I can make any sense of are, in fact, untrue. Obama & Biden had nothing to do w the TON of evidence of Russian collusion in 2016 that had nothing to do w the preliminary notes that made up the “Steele Dossier.” Couldn’t you squeeze Hunter in here?
Yeah. I agree. It’s really weird how the legal system is so hard on criming criminals who commit crimes. And as far as the Steele dossier goes, you do know Manafort is telling everyone and the bartender that he was giving info to a Russian agent to “settle his debts”, right?
Someone who doesn’t know what “banana republic” means shouldn’t be running for office.
Please open a history book sometime.
WHAT? Trump? The person that planned an insurrection because he LOST an election!
No problem if mob HUNG his VP! Incited violence & trashing Capitol!
Took & kept top secret documents illegally!
Wow. You are off course. Trump is a CRIMINAL.
Bad combover. Check. Too long red tie. Check. Orange spray tan. Check. Tiny hands. Check. Cluelessness. Check…
The Trump Administration was filled with far too many incompetent boobs, starting with Donald Trump (r).
Bad combover. Check. Too long red tie. Check. Orange spray tan. Check. Tiny hands. Check. Cluelessness. Check…
Testimony:
SELECT COMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE THE
JANUARY 6TH ATTACK ON THE U.S. CAPITOL,
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
DEPOSITION OF: KASHYAP PRAMOD PATEL
Thursday, December 9, 2021
Washington, D.C
[Page 49]
[….]
Q How about the summer of 2020? asked you some questions about the impact that the summer protests had on preparation. Right now, separate from any email, separate from any document, what do you remember about how what happened in the summer impacted preparations for January 6th?
[Discussion off the record.]
The Witness. So, at that time, in the summer of 2020, I was deputy assistant to the President and senior director for counterterrorism. So that was my focus.
BY [….] Q I understand.
A So what I remember? I remember the media and the Lafayette Square incident. Of course, I remember the media’s portrayal of it, and I remember the video and the walk-across. I don’t recall having conversations with intel or DOD at that time, and —
Q That’s not my question. My question is, in January, the first few days of January of 2021–
A Uh-huh.
Q — you’re the chief of staff to the Secretary of Defense. Was there any discussion that you recall about what happened in the summer impacting preparations, DOD preparations, for what was coming on January 6th?
A So I believe I addressed that, so I’ll refer back to that answer. But, to address your question again, I rely on what I previously stated. But do I recall conversations about the summer in early January?
Q Yes.
A I recall some conversations with leadership at the Department that it came up. The specifics I do not recall.
Q Okay. Again, as you sit here today, no recollection of any of the specifics of how the summer protest events impacted the Defense Department’s preparation?
A I think as I stated earlier, what I do remember is that the senior leadership that was in place at the Department of Defense reminded senior leadership that was then in place of lessons learned. And whatever those lessons learned were documented by us in our recording — in our reportings, excuse me. And so, outside of that, I don’t have any other independent memory of not using anything else.
Q What were the lessons learned?
A You’d have to ask the people that were there —
Q I’m asking you, Mr. Patel.
A Well, I wasn’t there.
Q In your mind, what were the lessons learned from the summer that affected preparations for January 6th?
A The biggest lesson in my mind —
Q Yes.
A — looking back at the arc of this entire thing —
Q Great.
A — is that the Members of Congress did not want an arms display, for lack of a better word, on National Guardsmen and -women ever. That’s my recollection.
Q Okay.
A Now, that’s what the number one — I wouldn’t call it number one — that was a lesson learned that I recall other folks saying, but that’s about it.
Q And how did that relate to the summer of 2020?
A I’m not sure. What do you mean?
Q What do you recall — you said Members of Congress didn’t want an armed display. How does that in some way — again, your recollection — reach back to what happened in the summer of 2020?
A I think it stems from, I believe, Chairman Milley at the time walked across Lafayette Square with a sidearm holstered on his military uniform. I believe that’s what that reference was to. And Chairman Milley would have a better idea of those conversations because it impacted him directly.
Q I’m not asking you to look inside of Chairman Milley or anybody else’s mind. I’m just asking you, in your role as a high-level official in the Department of Defense, how the summer events affected preparation for the riot at the Capitol.
A Look, I believe I’ve answered it. I mean, if you would like, we can again look at things that can help to jog my memory, but I believe I’ve answered your question.
Q You have no independent recollection beyond the stuff, the documents, that we’ve provided you —
Mr. Gabe. Respectfully, you’ve asked him the same question in slightly different ways five or six times. He’s testified to what he remembers, his best recollection. He’s talked about what he doesn’t recall, but — and I understand that you may wish that he recalled more, but he’s answered the question, like, five times.
BY [….] Q I’m just trying to pinpoint whether you have any independent recollection beyond the documents that you’ve been provided to review today.
A Beyond the documents that I’ve been directed to review, beyond whatever was provided, and beyond whatever I’ve already said, outside of that, I don’t have an independent recollection.
Q Okay. I thought that’s what you said. Thank you.
[….]
“…Q What do you recall — you said Members of Congress didn’t want an armed display. How does that in some way — again, your recollection — reach back to what happened in the summer of 2020?
A I think it stems from, I believe, Chairman Milley at the time walked across Lafayette Square with a sidearm holstered on his military uniform. I believe that’s what that reference was to. And Chairman Milley would have a better idea of those conversations because it impacted him directly…”
That’s it? Interestingly there was quite a bit more in all the video coverage. Quite a bit more.
========== Update: There is plenty of photographic coverage of General Mark Milley dressed in his BDUs accompanying Donald Trump (r) on the infamous walk across Lafayette Square. No belt or “holstered” sidearm on General Milley is visible in a multitude of images. ==========
[page 52]
BY [….] Q Okay. Let’s start on January 6th, on the day of.
A Uh-huh.
Q When did you first learn about the — any type of escalation of violence at the Capitol?
A I’m not sure. I think it’s detailed in the timeline I provided you, so I would say whatever that timeline says is the appropriate answer.
BY [….] Q Well, the timeline’s not just your memory, though, right? Without the timeline, do you remember when you first learned on that day that there was a breach at the Capitol?
A I believe late morning, early afternoon, from the best of my memory, is that on TV — and there’s TVs on at the Department of Defense, and there was a showing by video cameras that people were marching towards the Capitol. So whenever that was, in and around that time is when we saw it.
Q “We” meaning who?
A Whoever was in the Office of the Secretary of Defense where the TVs were on.
Q And do you remember listening to President Trump’s speech that day?
A I don’t. I believe I was working on a number of other things.
Q Did you speak to anybody — after you saw the march up to the Capitol, what happened next, from your memory?
A As best as I can recall, there was a lot of phone call activity that started happening. We tried to divvy up the work as best we could to be responsive to Congress, to public affairs, to the White House.
[….]
[page 59]
[….]
Q Did Tony Ornate ever reach out to you?
A Being the deputy chief of staff to Mark Meadows, he probably did. He —
Q On January 6th?
A Tony and I — Mr. Ornate and I have worked together for a long time, and so it’s possible he also reached out. I’m telling you, I can’t remember every phone call I had. If there’s something you can show me, like a call log, that says I talked to them, maybe I can narrow it down.
Q Did you talk to the President at all during January 6th?
A I don’t believe that the President — President Trump and I spoke on January 6th. That’s my memory.
Q Do you not believe — wouldn’t you remember if the President reached out to you on January 6th?
A Not necessarily. But I’m telling you, I don’t remember him doing so, and I don’t remember calling him on January 6th.
Q When you say “not necessarily,” there’s an attack on the Capitol, and he is the President of the United States.
A Okay.
Q You wouldn’t remember if you talked to him on January 6th?
[Discussion off the record.]
The Witness. Yeah, as I said, I don’t remember having a phone call with the President on January 6th.
BY [….] Q So, Mr. Patel, just so I’m clear, that does not mean you did not have a call with the President on January 6th. States during an attack on the Capitol would be memorable, no?
A To me?
Q To you.
A To me as chief of staff? It might be. I know this might be hard for you to believe, but I talked to the President a number chimes. So, any time that the President called, it was a memorable moment. But I don’t remember every single phone call I fielded, especially on a day when I fielded upwards of 100 phone calls.
Q So you have no recollection if the President called you or did not call you.
A I believe — as I said, I don’t believe we spoke on January 6th.
Q But by saying “I don’t believe” — and you’ve been an attorney, a trial attorney — it’s not precluding that you did have a conversation with President Trump.
A And, as I’ve said, if you show me a call log that says —
Q I don’t have to show you a call log for you to jog your memory if you talked to President Trump or not.
Mr. Gabe. Hold on just a second.
[….]
Apparently any memoir will be really short.
Too many people bear responsibility for all of this.
Go to the transcripts. Pick one, any one. You will and should be horrified.
[General Mark A. Milley, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff]: …One example is I received a written document on the 11th, I think it’s — no, it’s the 12th, I think it is, the 12th of November, 3 days after Secretary Esper is relieved, I get called up into Acting SecDef Miller’s office. And it’s Miller, me, and Patel. Patel hands me a piece of paper and I testified this to Congress a couple, 3, 4 weeks ago hands a piece of paper to me signed by then President Trump. And it basically has two sentences in it.
And it says: You are hereby ordered to withdraw all U.S. military forces from Somalia no later than 31 December. The second sentence says: You are directed to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq by 15 January. That’s it. And there was another line that said something like inform all allies or something like that. And I looked at Patel and I said: Who gave the President the military advice for this? Did you do this, Kash? And he said: Oh, no, no, I had nothing to do with it.
looked at Acting Secretary Miller and I said: Did you give the President military advice on this? Oh, no, no, not me. I said: Okay, well, we got to go over and see the President then to make sure that he’s fully informed — going back to the constitutional responsibilities — to make sure he’s fully informed. It’s a legal order, but I want to make sure. I’ve got duties to do here, constitutional duties that I’ve got to make sure he’s properly advised. So we go over to the White House. We walk into the National Security Advisor’s office, Robert O’Brien, hand him the order, said: Robert, where’s this coming from and is this true? And O’Brien says: I’ve never seen it before. Said okay. Kellogg is — Keith Kellogg, the National Security Advisor to the Vice President, is there. Kellogg says: Let me see this piece of paper. Kellogg takes the piece of paper, looks at it. He says: Something is really wrong here, this doesn’t look right.
And I looked at Kellogg and I said: You’re telling me that thing is forged? That’s a forged piece of paper directing a military operation by the President of the United States, that’s forged, Keith? And he said: I don’t know, I don’t know. So O’Brien and Kellogg then say: Give us a few minutes.
And they go away. I assume, I don’t know factually, but I assume it was to see the President. They come back 10 or 15 minutes later and they say: It’s rescinded. It’s over. It never existed. I said: Okay, fine. So it doesn’t exist. So I’ve seen reversals, like the little story about Gina, I’ve seen that before in that administration, these immediate reversals when challenged on specific things if they’re not rigorously thought out, et cetera. So that’s an example.
[….]
Forged?
It appears that General Milley took his oath seriously.
Too many people bear responsibility for all of this.
Go to the transcripts. Pick one, any one. You will and should be horrified.
…This appeal requires us to consider whether the district court had jurisdiction to block the United States from using lawfully seized records in a criminal investigation. The answer is no.
Former President Donald J. Trump brought a civil action seeking an injunction against the government after it executed a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago residence. He argues that a court-mandated special master review process is necessary because the government’s Privilege Review Team protocols were inadequate, because various seized documents are protected by executive or attorney-client privilege, because he could have declassified documents or designated them as personal rather than presidential records, and—if all that fails—because the government’s appeal was procedurally deficient. The overnment disagrees with each contention.
[….]
In considering these arguments, we are faced with a choice: apply our usual test; drastically expand the availability of equitable jurisdiction for every subject of a search warrant; or carve out an unprecedented exception in our law for former presidents. We choose the first option. So the case must be dismissed…
[….]
…Indeed, Plaintiff does not press the district court’s theory on appeal. Instead, he argues that the Presidential Records Act gives him a possessory interest in the seized documents. This argument is unresponsive. Even if Plaintiff’s statutory interpretation were correct (a proposition that we neither consider nor endorse), personal interest in or ownership of a seized document is not synonymous with the need for its return.3 In most search warrants, the government seizes property that unambiguously belongs to the subject of a search. That cannot be enough to support equitable jurisdiction….
(footnote) 3 During discussion of this factor at oral argument, Plaintiff’s counsel noted that the seized items included “golf shirts” and “pictures of Celine Dion.” The government concedes that Plaintiff “may have a property interest in his personal effects.” While Plaintiff may have an interest in these items and others like them, we do not see the need for their immediate return after seizure under a presumptively lawful search warrant.
….Having failed to show his own need, Plaintiff attempts—as he did in the district court—to reverse the standard, arguing that the government does not need the non-classified documents for its investigation. This is not self-evident, but it would be irrelevant in any event. Plaintiff’s task was to show why he needed the documents, not why the government did not. He has failed to meet his burden under this factor….
….Plaintiff’s alternative framing of his grievance is that he needs a special master and an injunction to protect documents that he designated as personal under the Presidential Records Act. But as we have said, the status of a document as personal or presidential does not alter the authority of the government to seize it under a warrant supported by probable cause; search warrants authorize the seizure of personal records as a matter of course. The Department of Justice has the documents because they were seized with a search warrant, not because of their status under the Presidential Records Act. So Plaintiff’s suggestion that “whether the Government is entitled to retain some or all the seized documents has not been determined by any court” is incorrect. The magistrate judge decided that issue when approving the warrant. To the extent that the categorization of these documents has legal relevance in future proceedings, the issue can be raised at that time….
….The law is clear. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so. Either approach would be a radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations. And both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations. Accordingly, we agree with the government that the district court improperly exercised equitable jurisdiction, and that dismissal of the entire proceeding is required.
The district court improperly exercised equitable jurisdiction in this case. For that reason, we VACATE the September 5 order on appeal and REMAND with instructions for the district court to DISMISS the underlying civil action.
Dayam.
Bad combover. Check. Too long red tie. Check. Orange spray tan. Check. Tiny hands. Check. Cluelessness. Check…
…The Special Counsel is authorized to conduct the ongoing investigation into whether any person or entity violated the law in connection with efforts to interfere with the lawful transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election or the certification ofthe Electoral College vote held on or about January 6, 2021 , as well as any matters that arose or might arise directly from this investigation or that are within the scope of 28 C.F.R. § 600.4(a). This authorization does not apply to prosecutions that are currently pending in the District of Columbia, as well as future investigations and prosecutions of individuals for offenses they committed while physically present on the Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021. Those investigations and prosecutions remain under the authority of the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. Further delineation ofthe authorizations between the Special Counsel and
the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia will be provided as necessary and appropriate…
…The Special Counsel is further authorized to conduct the ongoing investigation referenced and described in the United States’ Response to Motion for Judicial Oversight and Additional Relief, Donald J Trump v. United States, No. 9:22-CV-81294-AMC (S.D. Fla. Aug. 30, 2022) (ECF No. 48 at 5- 13), as well as any matters that arose or may arise directly from this investigation or that are within the scope of 28 C.F.R. § 600.4(a)…
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland announced today the appointment of former career Justice Department prosecutor and former chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague, Jack Smith, to serve as Special Counsel to oversee two ongoing criminal investigations. The first is the investigation, as described in court filings in the District of Columbia, into whether any person or entity unlawfully interfered with the transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election or the certification of the Electoral College vote held on or about January 6, 2021. The second is the ongoing investigation involving classified documents and other presidential records, as well as the possible obstruction of that investigation, referenced and described in court filings submitted in a pending matter in the Southern District of Florida.
“Based on recent developments, including the former President’s announcement that he is a candidate for President in the next election, and the sitting President’s stated intention to be a candidate as well, I have concluded that it is in the public interest to appoint a special counsel,” said Attorney General Garland. “Such an appointment underscores the Department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters. It also allows prosecutors and agents to continue their work expeditiously, and to make decisions indisputably guided only by the facts and the law.”
The Attorney General also stated, “Although the Special Counsel will not be subject to the day-to-day supervision of any official of the Department, he must comply with the regulations, procedures, and policies of the Department. I will ensure that the Special Counsel receives the resources to conduct this work quickly and completely. Given the work done to date and Mr. Smith’s prosecutorial experience, I am confident that this appointment will not slow the completion of these investigations. The men and women who are pursuing these investigations are conducting themselves in accordance with the highest standards of professionalism. I could not be prouder of them. I strongly believe that the normal processes of this Department can handle all investigations with integrity. And I also believe that appointing a Special Counsel at this time is the right thing to do. The extraordinary circumstances presented here demand it. Mr. Smith is the right choice to complete these matters in an even-handed and urgent manner.”
Special Counsel Smith has resigned as the chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague charged with investigating and adjudicating war crimes in Kosovo.
Attachment(s): Download 2022.11.18_order_5559-2022.pdf
Component(s): Office of the Attorney General
Press Release Number: 22-1237
Updated November 18, 2022
“…You know, there’s something about this that’s like… well, it’s like you’re expecting a letter that you’re just crazy to get, and you hang around the front door for fear you might not hear him ring. You never realize that he always rings twice….”
Donald Trump, who tried to overthrow the 2020 presidential election results and inspired a deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol, announced Tuesday night that he has launched a 2024 presidential bid.
![Eric Schmitt (r) [2021 file photo].](https://i0.wp.com/showmeprogress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/20210819-606A2414.jpg?ssl=1)
