Biden accused of trying to entrap Trump

 Red States:

A new report is shedding light on exactly how the DOJ investigation into Donald Trump over supposed “classified documents” at Mar-a-Lago got started. The FBI recently raided the former president’s Florida home, claiming possible violations of the Espionage Act and other national security concerns.

What flowed after the unprecedented action was a series of coordinated leaks from inside the government meant to make Trump look guilty of crimes. But how did things get that far?

Apparently, it started with the National Archives, which is run by a partisan hack who decided to treat Trump differently from all other presidents before him. When Barack Obama took millions of pages of documents, including many that were undoubtedly classified, upon leaving office, the National Archives gave him a sweetheart deal allowing him to digitize everything at a later date (none of that has happened all these years later and surprise, no raid). Heck, there are presidents whose libraries still haven’t returned requested documents decades after their deaths. For Trump, though, the National Archives didn’t even give him a year before running to the DOJ to push for a criminal investigation.

With the “crime” pinpointed, the National Archives and the DOJ still needed a legal hook, and apparently, they got it by directly coordinating with the Biden administration. That’s been revealed via memos reviewed by Just The News.

The memos show then-White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su was engaged in conversations with the FBI, DOJ and National Archives as early as April, shortly after 15 boxes of classified and other materials were voluntarily returned to the federal historical agency from Trump’s Florida home.

By May, Su conveyed to the Archives that President Joe Biden would not object to waiving his predecessor’s claims to executive claims, a decision that opened the door for DOJ to get a grand jury to issue a subpoena compelling Trump to turn over any remaining materials he possessed from his presidency.

The machinations are summarized in several memos and emails exchanged between the various agencies in spring 2022, months before the FBI took the added unprecedented step of raiding Trump’s Florida compound with a court-issued search warrant.

One specific letter to Trump’s legal team outlines Biden’s White House counsel telling the National Archives that the administration was waiving Trump’s previous claims of executive privilege.

That letter revealed Biden empowered the National Archives and Records Administration to waive any claims to executive privilege that Trump might assert to block DOJ from gaining access to the documents.

“The Counsel to the President has informed me that, in light of the particular circumstances presented here, President Biden defers to my determination, in consultation with the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, regarding whether or not I should uphold the former President’s purported ‘protective assertion of executive privilege,'” Wall wrote. “… I have therefore decided not to honor the former President’s ‘protective’ claim of privilege.”

My colleague Matt Margolis over at PJ Media describes what happened here as entrapment, and I concur in principle. That’s exactly what this looks like. Trump had done what many presidents before him had done, which is to claim executive privilege over documents originating from his administration. The idea that a later president, specifically a political rival, could then waive that, allowing a criminal investigation to snap into place is insane, but that’s what happened here.

...

I think Trump will likely challenge Biden's attempt to waive Trump's executive privilege.  It does look like a bad faith effort to incriminate Trump for doing what was always considered legal. 

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