BOMBSHELL: FBI Staged Fake Photo of Classified Documents for PR Purposes

[Cow Poke]

BOMBSHELL: FBI Staged Fake Photo of Classified Documents for PR Purposes

This is not your father's FBI.

You know that famous photo of Trump's purloined Top Secret documents? The one that the FBI released that showed all those classified documents hidden in folders?

It's kinda, sorta faked. Staged. Not accurate at all. A sham. A con. Complete BS.

No, it's not a photoshop. That would be worse, I suppose. Maybe.

You see, those folders that scream Top Secret were brought by the FBI and the documents were inserted in them by FBI agents.

Think about this for a minute. The General Services Administration shipped these documents to Trump, which is why they are stuffed away in Mar a Lago in the first place. Then, the Archives met with the Biden administration to prod it to investigate Trump.

Then the FBI raids Mar a Lago, armed with folders screaming "Top Secret," photographs them, and releases the photo to the world, suggesting that Trump stole away with these documents in these folders screaming Top Secret.

fbi fraud.png

It is the picture that launched a thousand pearl-clutching articles.

A few weeks after the armed FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, the Department of Justice released a stunning photograph depicting alleged contraband seized from Donald Trump’s Palm Beach estate that day; the image showed colored sheets representing scary classification levels attached to files purportedly discovered in Trump’s private office.

Included as a government exhibit to oppose Trump’s lawsuit requesting a special master to vet the 13,000 items taken from his residence, the crime scene pic immediately went viral—just as Attorney General Merrick Garland, who authorized the unprecedented raid, intended.

At the time, even regime-friendly mouthpieces questioned the need and optics of the raid; the photo helped juice the DOJ’s justification for the storming of Trump’s castle.

“[The] question of whether Trump had classified material with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort has captured the public’s attention. The photo published by the government appears to answer that question quite affirmatively,” Washington Post resident fact checker Philip Bump wrote on August 31, 2022.

Some of Bump’s colleagues were more hyperbolic. An ex-CIA officer told ABC News the cover sheets indicated the highest level of secrecy, which in the wrong hands could have resulted in murder. “People's lives are truly at stake. Without being melodramatic, anything that helps an adversary identify a human source means life and death," intelligence expert Douglas London melodramatically warned in reaction to the photo.

[Cow Poke]

BOMBSHELL: FBI Staged Fake Photo of Classified Documents for PR Purposes

This is not your father's FBI.

You know that famous photo of Trump's purloined Top Secret documents? The one that the FBI released that showed all those classified documents hidden in folders?

It's kinda, sorta faked. Staged. Not accurate at all. A sham. A con. Complete BS.

No, it's not a photoshop. That would be worse, I suppose. Maybe.

You see, those folders that scream Top Secret were brought by the FBI and the documents were inserted in them by FBI agents.

Think about this for a minute. The General Services Administration shipped these documents to Trump, which is why they are stuffed away in Mar a Lago in the first place. Then, the Archives met with the Biden administration to prod it to investigate Trump.

Then the FBI raids Mar a Lago, armed with folders screaming "Top Secret," photographs them, and releases the photo to the world, suggesting that Trump stole away with these documents in these folders screaming Top Secret.

fbi fraud.png

It is the picture that launched a thousand pearl-clutching articles.

A few weeks after the armed FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, the Department of Justice released a stunning photograph depicting alleged contraband seized from Donald Trump’s Palm Beach estate that day; the image showed colored sheets representing scary classification levels attached to files purportedly discovered in Trump’s private office.

Included as a government exhibit to oppose Trump’s lawsuit requesting a special master to vet the 13,000 items taken from his residence, the crime scene pic immediately went viral—just as Attorney General Merrick Garland, who authorized the unprecedented raid, intended.

At the time, even regime-friendly mouthpieces questioned the need and optics of the raid; the photo helped juice the DOJ’s justification for the storming of Trump’s castle.

“[The] question of whether Trump had classified material with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort has captured the public’s attention. The photo published by the government appears to answer that question quite affirmatively,” Washington Post resident fact checker Philip Bump wrote on August 31, 2022.

Some of Bump’s colleagues were more hyperbolic. An ex-CIA officer told ABC News the cover sheets indicated the highest level of secrecy, which in the wrong hands could have resulted in murder. “People's lives are truly at stake. Without being melodramatic, anything that helps an adversary identify a human source means life and death," intelligence expert Douglas London melodramatically warned in reaction to the photo.

New court filings in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s espionage and obstruction case against Trump and two co-defendants conclusively demonstrate that the government used the cover sheets to deceive the public as well as the court. The photo was a stunt, and one that adds more fuel to this dumpster-fire case.

Jay Bratt, who was the lead DOJ prosecutor on the investigation at the time and now is assigned to Smith’s team, described the photo this way in his August 30, 2022 response to Trump’s special master lawsuit:

“[Thirteen] boxes or containers contained documents with classification markings, and in all, over one hundred unique documents with classification markings…were seized. Certain of the documents had colored cover sheets indicating their classification status. (Emphasis added.) See, e.g., Attachment F (redacted FBI photograph of certain documents and classified cover sheets recovered from a container in the ‘45 office’).”

The DOJ’s clever wordsmithing, however, did not accurately describe the origin of the cover sheets. In what must be considered not only an act of doctoring evidence but willfully misleading the American people into believing the former president is a criminal and threat to national security, agents involved in the raid attached the cover sheets to at least seven files to stage the photo.

Classified cover sheets were not “recovered” in the container, contrary to Bratt’s declaration to the court. In fact, after being busted recently by defense attorneys for mishandling evidence in the case, Bratt had to fess up about how the cover sheets actually ended up on the documents.

Here is Bratt’s new version of the story, where he finally admits a critical detail that he failed to disclose in his August 2022 filing:

“[If] the investigative team found a document with classification markings, it removed the document, segregated it, and replaced it with a placeholder sheet. The investigative team used classified cover sheets for that purpose.”

[Sam]

I'm sorry, but the complaint is that the FBI found classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and instead of publishing a photograph that displayed the content of those documents, it used cover sheets relevant to the level of classification in each document?

Is that really a complaint you want to make?

-Sam

[Cow Poke]

I'm sorry, but the complaint is that the FBI found classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and instead of publishing a photograph that displayed the content of those documents, it used cover sheets relevant to the level of classification in each document?

Is that really a complaint you want to make?

-Sam

Always good to see you, Sam.

[CivilDiscourse]

I'm sorry, but the complaint is that the FBI found classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and instead of publishing a photograph that displayed the content of those documents, it used cover sheets relevant to the level of classification in each document?

Is that really a complaint you want to make?

-Sam

This is a poor, bordering on dishonest, paraphrase Sam. The complaint (true or not) being made is simple: The government represented those coversheets AS what was recovered, not placeholders used to represent the documents.

[Cow Poke]

This is a poor, bordering on dishonest paraphrase Sam. The complaint (true or not) being made is simple: The government represented those coversheets AS what was recovered, not placeholders used to represent the documents.

But it's entirely fair because, you know, Trump.

[rogue06]

BOMBSHELL: FBI Staged Fake Photo of Classified Documents for PR Purposes

This is not your father's FBI.

You know that famous photo of Trump's purloined Top Secret documents? The one that the FBI released that showed all those classified documents hidden in folders?

It's kinda, sorta faked. Staged. Not accurate at all. A sham. A con. Complete BS.

No, it's not a photoshop. That would be worse, I suppose. Maybe.

You see, those folders that scream Top Secret were brought by the FBI and the documents were inserted in them by FBI agents.

Think about this for a minute. The General Services Administration shipped these documents to Trump, which is why they are stuffed away in Mar a Lago in the first place. Then, the Archives met with the Biden administration to prod it to investigate Trump.

Then the FBI raids Mar a Lago, armed with folders screaming "Top Secret," photographs them, and releases the photo to the world, suggesting that Trump stole away with these documents in these folders screaming Top Secret.

fbi fraud.png

It is the picture that launched a thousand pearl-clutching articles.

A few weeks after the armed FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, the Department of Justice released a stunning photograph depicting alleged contraband seized from Donald Trump’s Palm Beach estate that day; the image showed colored sheets representing scary classification levels attached to files purportedly discovered in Trump’s private office.

Included as a government exhibit to oppose Trump’s lawsuit requesting a special master to vet the 13,000 items taken from his residence, the crime scene pic immediately went viral—just as Attorney General Merrick Garland, who authorized the unprecedented raid, intended.

At the time, even regime-friendly mouthpieces questioned the need and optics of the raid; the photo helped juice the DOJ’s justification for the storming of Trump’s castle.

“[The] question of whether Trump had classified material with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort has captured the public’s attention. The photo published by the government appears to answer that question quite affirmatively,” Washington Post resident fact checker Philip Bump wrote on August 31, 2022.

Some of Bump’s colleagues were more hyperbolic. An ex-CIA officer told ABC News the cover sheets indicated the highest level of secrecy, which in the wrong hands could have resulted in murder. “People's lives are truly at stake. Without being melodramatic, anything that helps an adversary identify a human source means life and death," intelligence expert Douglas London melodramatically warned in reaction to the photo.

Is this a result of, or maybe part of, the mishandling of the documents that Smith was forced to admit happened?

[Cow Poke]

Is this a result of, or maybe part of, the mishandling of the documents that Smith was forced to admit happened?

I'm thinking yes.

[Mountain Man]

More sketchy nonsense. Wow. This goes along with the thread I started about Jack Smith confessing that his team mishandled, misplaced, and lost key pieces of evidence when they were sorting through the documents they seized from Mar-a-Lago. There is so much malfeasance from Smith's team that Judge Cannon was forced to suspend the trial indefinitely while she puts the prosecution under a microscope.

[rogue06]

More sketchy nonsense. Wow. This goes along with the thread I started about Jack Smith confessing that his team mishandled, misplaced, and lost key pieces of evidence when they were sorting through the documents they seized from Mar-a-Lago. There is so much malfeasance from Smith's team that Judge Cannon was forced to suspend the trial indefinitely while she puts the prosecution under a microscope.

All kinda ironic given this was all supposed to be about the mishandling of classified material in the first place.

[Sam]

This is a poor, bordering on dishonest, paraphrase Sam. The complaint (true or not) being made is simple: The government represented those coversheets AS what was recovered, not placeholders used to represent the documents.

I'm not at all sure that's true and I suspect no one here has actually examined the government's representation of the photograph. But even if it were true, it's irrelevant: what's being depicted in the photograph is an accurate representation of what the government found, which is a trove of highly-classified documents. That you're seeing cover sheets instead of the classified contents doesn't at all strike me as a dishonest representation. In fact, it's the best representation of the gravity of what was found in Mar-a-Lago boxes; top secret documents recovered out of their protective folders, under appropriate cover sheets provided by the recovery team.

-Sam

[Sam]

Is this a result of, or maybe part of, the mishandling of the documents that Smith was forced to admit happened?

Since the mishandling of document order occurred during subsequent reviews after the boxes had been relocated to DC, no.

-Sam

[CivilDiscourse]

I'm not at all sure that's true and I suspect no one here has actually examined the government's representation of the photograph. But even if it were true, it's irrelevant: what's being depicted in the photograph is an accurate representation of what the government found, which is a trove of highly-classified documents. That you're seeing cover sheets instead of the classified contents doesn't at all strike me as a dishonest representation. In fact, it's the best representation of the gravity of what was found in Mar-a-Lago boxes; top secret documents recovered out of their protective folders, under appropriate cover sheets provided by the recovery team.

-Sam

That doesn't change the fact that your PARAPHRASE of the CP's complaint was misrepresentative of what he actually wrote. You may not agree with his complaint, but you did not actually represent his complaint in an honest manner.

[Cow Poke]

Fact is, regardless of the spin, in a high profile case like this it is IMPERATIVE to do things entirely by the book to prevent even the allegation of wrongdoing.

Clearly, that was not the case.

[rogue06]

Fact is, regardless of the spin, in a high profile case like this it is IMPERATIVE to do things entirely by the book to prevent even the allegation of wrongdoing.

Clearly, that was not the case.

When a verdict has been already decided in advance of any trial, everything else are unimportant, niggling details.