Warrant Shows DOJ, FBI Waited *Days* To Conduct Mar-A-Lago Raid After Judge Approved; Marjorie Taylor Greene Moves to Impeach AG Merrick Garland Over Trump Raid

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By Breitbart. The warrant that authorized the search of former President Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago shows it was issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart on Aug. 5, 2022, at 12:12 p.m.—nearly three full days before the Justice Department and FBI conducted a raid to execute it.

The raid did not occur until the morning of Aug. 8, 2022, when federal agents from the FBI arrived at Mar-a-Lago to execute the search warrant.

The document, obtained and reviewed by Breitbart News, shows that the DOJ and FBI waited several days after Reinhart approved the warrant to conduct the raid, something that severely undercuts the talking points issued by Attorney General Merrick Garland in a public statement on Thursday when he broke his silence to discuss the matter in televised remarks.

Why the authorities waited several days to execute service of the warrant if the matter rose to such a serious national security issue is unclear. If what federal agents intended to obtain from the raid was such a risk to national security, the fact they decided to linger and wait for several days before executing is likely to become a major point of contention as this debate plays out in front of the public. (Read more from “Warrant Shows DOJ, FBI Waited *Days* To Conduct Mar-A-Lago Raid After Judge Approved” HERE)

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Marjorie Taylor Greene Moves to Impeach AG Merrick Garland Over Trump Raid

By Townhall. . .Greene filed a motion to impeach Merrick Garland, which is symbolic but could be the first glimpse of the fight to come when the Republicans regain the majority in the House (via The Hill):

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) announced on Friday that she had filed articles of impeachment against Attorney General Merrick Garland as the FBI’s search of the former president’s Florida residence roils Republicans.

Greene’s resolution claims that the attorney general’s “personal approval to seek a search warrant for the raid on the home of the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, constitutes a blatant attempt to persecute a political opponent.”

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The warrant showed that the FBI secured classified materials that were taken to Mar-a-Lago and suggests the former president is being investigated for possible violations of the Espionage Act.

Republicans, including Greene, have repeatedly accused the Justice Department of going after Trump for political reasons.

(Read more from “Marjorie Taylor Greene Moves to Impeach AG Merrick Garland Over Trump Raid” HERE)

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DOJ Opens Sex Abuse Investigation Into Southern Baptists, Subpoenas Leaders

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The Justice Department has started an investigation into sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention, and the executive committee of the United States’ largest Protestant denomination has received a federal subpoena in connection with the probe, the group said Friday.

A spokesman told The Washington Times the committee’s general counsel acknowledged “the [executive committee] has received a subpoena. No individuals have been subpoenaed at this point. This is an ongoing investigation and we are not commenting on our discussions with the [Justice Department].”

The Baptist group said in a statement Friday it “recently became aware” that the Department of Justice had begun an investigation into the 13.7-million-member church as well as “multiple SBC entities.” . . .

An independent investigation of sexual abuse charges in the Southern Baptist Convention led to the May release of a 400-page report documenting a decades-long coverup of the abuse and related misconduct. (Read more from “DOJ Opens Sex Abuse Investigation Into Southern Baptists, Subpoenas Leaders” HERE)

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Trump Warrant Suggests Espionage Act; Same Law Hillary Clinton Dodged

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The search warrant for the raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on Monday suggests he is being investigated under the Espionage Act of 1917 — the same law that Hillary Clinton was suspected of violating in 2016.

Attorney General Merrick Garland admitted Thursday that he personally approved the warrant application, which seeks broad discretion to search Trump’s home based on three statutes: 18 U.S.C. section 793, on the mishandling of defense information; 18 U.S.C. section 1519, relating to the destruction of federal documents; and 18 U.S.C. section 2071, which punishes hiding, moving, or destroying federal documents. Section 793 is from the Espionage Act of 1917, passed during the First World War.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was suspected of violating the latter when she used an unsecured private email server in her own home to handle her communications, including emails with classified information, during her time in office.

The relevant part of section 793 punishes “gross negligence” in the handling of defense information, and failure to report the loss or destruction of that information. Clinton was accused of both; her staff even physically destroyed her mobile phones.

Then-FBI Director James Comey, who intervened in the case after then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch was caught meeting with former President Bill Clinton on the tarmac of an airport in Arizona, said that while Hillary Clinton had been “extremely careless” in her handling of classified information, she did not intend to violate the statute. The statute does not, however, include any requirement of intent, leading conservative critics to argue that Comey had been looking to exonerate her. (Read more from “Trump Warrant Suggests Espionage Act; Same Law Hillary Clinton Dodged” HERE)

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

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Some Schools Won’t Tell Parents When Their Kids Express Gender Confusion. Experts Say That’s Illegal.

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Public schools nationwide are telling students they can assume different pronouns, have access to another sex’s bathroom, and change their name without letting their parents know, a violation of federal law legal experts tell the Washington Free Beacon.

Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia bar teachers from “outing” transgender students to parents, as do Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland. These increasingly common policies are meant to guard students against parents who, according to Fairfax County schools, “may not yet be supportive of their child’s transition.” But according to Vernadette Broyles, they also violate parents’ right to privacy as codified in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 1974.

“Privacy rights are held by the parents for the child, not by the child against their parents,” Broyles, president and founder of the Child and Parental Rights Campaign, told the Free Beacon. Broyles says Fairfax and Montgomery school officials are “attempting to usurp parental authority,” which is protected by the 14th Amendment. She called the schools’ policies “intentional obfuscation, driving a wedge between children and parents at a time when children need their parents most.” Three other attorneys involved in similar cases cited the same violations of the Constitution and federal law in support of parents’ rights.

The news comes as parents nationwide are filing lawsuits against school districts over the issue. Parents Defending Education, a conservative grassroots group, announced last week it was suing an Iowa school district for refusing to disclose a child’s transgender status without their permission. The district keeps “temporary” files for students’ gender support plans, allowing them to skirt official records requests from parents. Similarly, the Maryland and Virginia school districts instruct their employees to refrain from mentioning a child’s chosen gender identity on school forms or in emails where it could become public. (Read more from “Some Schools Won’t Tell Parents When Their Kids Express Gender Confusion. Experts Say That’s Illegal.” HERE)

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Trump Claims ‘Standing Order’ Declassified Records as Soon as They Left Oval Office

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Former President Donald Trump claims a “standing order” allowed him to declassify documents as soon as they left the Oval Office.

A statement from Trump’s office was read by journalist John Solomon on Fox News on Friday evening as the former president faces fallout from an FBI raid of his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida this week in which agents reportedly seized all sorts of classified materials. The statement was met with intense skepticism from legal experts.

“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,” the statement read, according to Solomon’s Just the News website.

“He had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken into the residence were deemed to be declassified,” the statement added. (Read more from “Trump Claims ‘Standing Order’ Declassified Records as Soon as They Left Oval Office” HERE)

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Has Inflation Peaked? Maybe, but It Could Be ‘Painfully Slow’ to Fall

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The cooler-than-expected July inflation data fueled hopes that consumer prices peaked earlier this summer after a year of relentless increases that crushed Americans, created a political firestorm for President Biden and forced the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates at the fastest pace in decades.

The consumer price index climbed 8.5% in July from the previous year, a bigger drop from the 9.1% recorded in June than economists projected. On a monthly basis, the index did not move at all as decreases in the cost of oil, gasoline and airfares offset increases in food and rent.

When excluding more volatile measurements of food and gasoline, prices jumped 5.9% in July, matching the previous month.

While the slowdown is likely a welcome respite for the Fed as it tries to wrestle inflation under control, experts cautioned that inflation remains painfully high and could be slow to return to pre-pandemic levels around 2%. (Read more from “Has Inflation Peaked? Maybe, but It Could Be ‘Painfully Slow’ to Fall” HERE)

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The Army Has Just 7 Weeks to Meet Its Recruitment Targets This Year. It’s Only 52% Of the Way There.

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The U.S. Army is projected to fall well short of its annual recruitment goal this year, having met only a little more than half of its target for fiscal year 2022.

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told NBC News Friday that the Army has recruited only 52% of its goal for FY 2022 and is expected be short by as many as 15,000 recruits.

“We are right now at about 52% of the mission that we had originally set for ourselves. So we’ve got a ways to go, and obviously we’ve only got about a month or so until the fiscal year ends,” Wormuth said. “I would say we’re [going to be] about 12,000 to 15,000 recruits short this year.”

The current fiscal year will end on September 30. The Army had initially sought to add 60,000 active-duty enlistments this year, but has since downsized that target amid dismal recruitment shortfalls.

NBC News reports that while the Army is authorized to have as many as 485,000 total troops, it recently lowered that number to 476,000. Wormuth warned that long-term recruitment shortages could impact military readiness. (Read more from “The Army Has Just 7 Weeks to Meet Its Recruitment Targets This Year. It’s Only 52% Of the Way There.” HERE)

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Arizona Begins Building Border Wall: ‘If the Federal Government Won’t Act, We Will’

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Arizona is taking border security into its own hands since the Biden administration refuses to take responsibility for the crisis is created.

Gov. Doug Ducey (R-AZ) announced that he issued an executive order directing the Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs to fill in the gaps of the Yuma border wall.

“If the federal government won’t act, we will,” Ducey said in a tweet.

During a call with reporters, Ducey said the construction of the wall began “six minutes ago” to finish the Trump-era wall that President Joe Biden ordered to halt when he came into office in 2021.

(Read more from “Arizona Begins Building Border Wall: ‘If the Federal Government Won’t Act, We Will'” HERE)

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FBI Raid Warrant Demanded Seizure of Literally Any Record Trump Ever Saw During 4-Year Presidential Term

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The FBI search warrant authorizing a government raid of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence sought an exhaustive list of any White House records the president ever came in contact with, according to the document obtained by The Federalist.

Outlining the “property to be seized” by the more than 30 agents who rummaged through the former president’s Mar-a-Lago mansion, the warrant demanded confiscation of any document Trump ever saw, read, or created for the entirety of his four years as commander-in-chief.

“All physical documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed in violation” of federal statutes governing records possession, the warrant reads, were to be seized. Records extended to “Any government and/or Presidential Records created between January 20, 2017, and January 20, 2021.”

In other words, had Trump written something down on a napkin, federal officials were authorized to raid the former president’s home and capture it.

The affidavit allegedly asserting probable cause has not been made available to the public by the DOJ or the federal court that sealed it. The search warrant was signed on Aug. 5 and gave authorities two weeks to conduct the unprecedented raid. The federal magistrate who signed the warrant previously donated thousands to former President Barack Obama. Attorney General Merrick Garland, whose Supreme Court nomination was invalidated after Donald Trump became president in 2017, acknowledged that he personally signed off on the raid in a Thursday press conference. Garland also claimed the search was conducted with a narrow scope. (Read more from “FBI Raid Warrant Demanded Seizure of Literally Any Record Trump Ever Saw During 4-Year Presidential Term” HERE)

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FBI Attacker Was Prolific Contributor to Trump’s Truth Social Website

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By The Washington Post. In the minutes after an armed man in body armor tried to breach an FBI field office in Cincinnati, an account with the suspect’s name, Ricky Shiffer, posted to former president Donald Trump’s social network, Truth Social: “If you don’t hear from me, it is true I tried attacking the F.B.I.”

The Shiffer account appeared to be one of Truth Social’s most prolific posters, writing 374 messages there in the past eight days — mostly to echo Trump’s false claims about election fraud and, in the hours after FBI agents searched Trump’s Florida home, call for all-out war. “Be ready to kill the enemy,” Shiffer had posted on Tuesday. “Kill [the FBI] on sight.”

Shiffer was killed Thursday in a shootout, police said, and the Truth Social account has since been taken down. But the calls for pro-Trump violence are still a common presence online — including on Truth Social, where the top “trending topics” Friday morning were “#FBIcorruption” and “DefundTheFBI.”

Truth Social’s parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group, did not respond to requests for comment. (Read more from “FBI Attacker Was Prolific Contributor to Trump’s Truth Social Website” HERE)

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Loner Gunman Who Attacked FBI Office Was Navy Vet Who Drove Fast and Was Devoted to Donald Trump

By NBC News. The pro-Trump gunman who was shot dead by Ohio police Thursday after he attacked the FBI’s Cincinnati field office with a nail gun was a Navy veteran with top-secret clearance who served on submarines and apparently had a need for speed, records and sources revealed Friday.

“I have a lead foot,” Ricky Walter Shiffer told a Minnesota police officer after he was caught going 50 mph in a 30 mph zone in his red Ford Mustang, according to a speeding ticket obtained by NBC News in collaboration with The Fargo Forum newspaper.

That was in February 2004 and Shiffer was living in St. Cloud, Minnesota, according to the ticket — one of several he accumulated before and after he was discharged from the Navy in 2003.

In recent months, Shiffer had been living in Omaha, Nebraska, and was on the FBI’s radar after they learned he had been at the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. (Read more from “Loner Gunman Who Attacked FBI Office Was Navy Vet Who Drove Fast and Was Devoted to Donald Trump” HERE)

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‘Violent Extremist’ Ricky Shiffer Investigated for Months After Jan 6

By MSN News. Cincinnati shooting suspect Ricky Shiffer was shot dead by police on the side of an interstate highway hours after he attempted to breach a visitor’s entrance at an FBI field office in the city.

The 42-year-old, of Columbus, Ohio, fled the scene of the attempted attack on Thursday morning before a standoff and shootout took place hours later. The FBI confirmed his death at 3.45pm following an exchange of gunfire.

Officials are investigating Shiffer’s ties to the US Capitol riot and right wing extremism as he appears to have claimed that he was present in Washington on 6 January on Truth Social, a pro-Trump social media site.

Federal agents were already looking into Shiffer’s ties to the Capitol attack before the FBI standoff, the New York Times reports.

Shiffer also appeared to support former US president Donald Trump’s unfounded claims of a stolen election in 2020 and responded to social media posts by pro-Trump figures such as congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and Donald Trump Jr. (Read more from “‘Violent Extremist’ Ricky Shiffer Investigated for Months After Jan 6” HERE)

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