The weaponization of the federal government against President Donald Trump during Joe Biden’s White House tenure has been documented over and over again by the simple act of observing those Biden officials did and said themselves.
Now another document has been released, confirming the agenda to attack and try to destroy Trump with political lawfare.
This time it’s an email from Patty Stemler, a longtime DOJ veteran “reportedly picked by [Attorney General Merrick] Garland in 2022 to help consult” on lawfare against Trump.
It involves the infamous FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, personally approved by Garland to include even going through the dresser drawers where Melania kept intimate clothing.
Stemler expressed concern the premise of Trump having classified documents there was unfounded, since he had the authority to declassify any federal document he chose, and in fact, confirmed he had done that.
At the time, during Biden’s term in the Oval Office, DOJ officials orchestrated several lawfare cases against Trump, cases that all would die in the courts. One of them was over “classified” documents he took with him when he left the White House.
But Trump himself had confirmed documents he took were declassified, and so therefore could not be the foundation for any legal case.
An expert with the Heritage Foundation confirmed that Trump’s argument in such a case could be, “I declassified those documents. I am not therefore in possession of classified documents now.”
A report at Just the News confirmed that a key Biden DOJ official believed essentially that.
Stemler, in an email to Sophia Brill, then at the DOJ’s National Security Division, immediately after the FBI raid, said: “I didn’t know about this search in advance, but I have been worrying about it ever since and worrying more now. Doesn’t Trump maintain that he had the authority to declassify documents while he was still President? Has anyone in NSD or OLC [Office of Legal Counsel] looked at that? I know we have procedures for declassifying, but is the President as Commander in Chief bound by those procedures? We also have procedures for granting pardons, but the President doesn’t have to follow them.”
The report explained, “Her warnings are now the second showing federal law enforcement’s unease with the unprecedented raid on Mar-a-Lago. Previously, FBI Director Kash Patel provided Congress evidence that agents did not believe they had not met the legal standard of probable cause required for the raid but proceeded anyway.”
Trump has confirmed that materials with “classified” markings seized by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago had been declassified under a “standing order” while he was president that allowed him to take sensitive materials to the White House residence to continue his work at night, the report said.
“The very fact that these documents were present at Mar-a-Lago means they couldn’t have been classified,” the former president’s office stated at the time. “As we can all relate to, everyone ends up having to bring home their work from time to time. American presidents are no different. President Trump, in order to prepare for work the next day, often took documents, including classified documents from the Oval Office to the residence.”
It’s the latest revelation that comes from the Biden administration that orchestrated multiple legal cases against Trump, often based on little or no evidence at all, but simply because he was, and is a political opponent.
And the evidence is being revealed in the words of the participants themselves.
This memo was found by the Justice Department as part of its investigation into the weaponization of federal law enforcement, Just the News reported.
Trump’s office, at the time, pointed out the fallacy of the FBI premise for the search, explaining, “He had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken into the residence were deemed to be declassified. The power to classify and declassify documents rests solely with the President of the United States. The idea that some paper-pushing bureaucrat, with classification authority delegated BY THE PRESIDENT, needs to approve of declassification is absurd.”
Stemler’s concern related to that very idea.
“I don’t know if we intend to charge anyone with respect to the classified documents seized yesterday, but if we disclose that we found X classified documents before we seek an indictment, will that trench on any fair trial rights or violate the ethical obligations of a prosecutor?”
She added, “I seem to recall that a prosecutor has some leeway to inform the public that we have arrested the serial killer and seized from his home evidence that ties him to the murders for the purpose of reassuring the public that they are now safe. But aren’t there ethical limits on what a prosecutor can say otherwise? I think this came up when Ashcroft was AG — post 9/11. Liza Collery drafted something to get him out of trouble. Let me see if I can find that.”
The report noted it was John Ashcroft who was AG after 09/11, and Collery was in DOJ’s appellate sextion.
“Has anyone looked at the privacy limitations on our disclosure of information seized from a residence where the disclosure is for a purpose other than investigation or prosecution (the recapture of government property)?” Stemler also asked.
Trump even informed the government at the time, through his lawyer, that as president he held the authority to declassify documents, and had done so.
Patel, currently the FBI director, told a publication at the time, “I was there with President Trump when he said ‘We are declassifying this information.’ […] This story is just another disinformation campaign designed to break the public trust in a president that lived on transparency. It’s yet another way to attack Trump and say he took classified information when he did not.”
Trump also said, on social media, at the time, “Number one, it was all declassified. Number two, they didn’t need to ‘seize’ anything. They could have had it anytime they wanted without playing politics and breaking into Mar-a-Lago. It was in secured storage, with an additional lock put on as per their request.”
The FBI even, while confiscating documents from Mar-a-Lago, spread a number of files out on the floor and took a photograph for distribution to the press.
The report said it was Barack Obama who, through executive orders, set up a procedure for federal officials to declassify documents, but exempted the president from those processes.
It was the specially appointed Jack Smith who brought a case against Trump over those declassified documents, a case that ultimately failed.
Meanwhile, a federal prosecutor in the DOJ office that helped Smith with his documents claim recently was charged for allegedly illegally emailing a copy of the case materials to herself, disguised as cake recipes.
Carmen Mercedes Lineberger, a managing assistant U.S. attorney of the Fort Pierce branch of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, was charged with theft of government money or property and illegally activities with government records.
