Transcription
Hi everyone, Harry here to talk about the now unsealed affidavit that supported the search by the FBI and the carding out of basically the whole motherload of the Fulton County Election Office, a county that Trump has continued to bitterly claim stole votes from him in the 2020 election when this search warrant was uh served and executed.
The big mystery was how the hell did they state probable cause of a current crime as you have to? Now we have seen the affidavit and the mystery is how the hell did a solid reputable magistrate as she is approve the affidavit and sign off on the warrant because how deficient is this warrant? Let me count the ways. Um it is just there's a complete hole at the center. It doesn't state probable cause. I'll cut to the chase and then double back, but it goes through 22 pages of recycled old stuff.
The uh referrals for which came from a well-known, longstanding election denier who was fermenting Trump's um views and insistence of a rigged election way back then. and now of course has been rewarded by being some kind of election security chief. He just uh has funneled the same old and I mean again and again and again and then basically uh the 22 pages can be summarized as reciting all of this stuff. then also making some points about how these very allegations have been discredited.
And then finally, this this gem that is a former prosecutor just completely knocked my socks off that the very very end, the la second to last paragraph, first paragraph mark conclusion, the warrant says if these deficiencies, and these were the the different things that went arry that I'm sure, by the way, happen in any even if they're accurate about them happen in any election office. were talking about these couple copies weren't kept and maybe uh this stuff these filing was wrong. I mean clear stuff that is uh just a part of everyday negligence or even just you know administrative overload. But if the warrant says these deficiencies were the result of intentional action, the election records identified in evidence B are violations of these crimes.
Take a step back with me be, you know, and and maybe uh you'll see why I am so gobsmacked. The affidavit has to show probable cause to believe there's evidence of a crime there. Uh the uh element maybe essential element of both these crimes is intentional conduct, not just screw-ups here and there. And so, how do you deal with that most essential element to show there's probable cause of a crime? If these deficiencies were the result of intentional action, then the records are evidence of violations. Yeah. No I mean, if the elements of the crime were satisfied, there would be a crime. If you shoot someone and miss, if you'd hit them, there would it could be murder. I mean, a magistrate seeing this would need to be thunder struck.
You would go, the way it works is you're the assistant US attorney. You go with the affidavit that you've helped the uh uh FBI agent prepare. You sit with the magistrate who goes over things. They would come to paragraph 84 and say, "What the hell? Uh, come back to me when you have probable cause, please." as would, by the way, any supervisor in a standard office. This obviously did not go through the standard supervisory channels because any prosecutor who tried to say, "Here you go, boss. I'm about to file this. Can you review it?" would be uh would shed this prosecutor for saying, "What what are you doing? There's no crime expressed here. There's no probable cause at all." That is just the core deficiency at the center. The center just doesn't hold here. It's just vacuous. And that's just for starters.
It's also the um the the source of this seems to be a referral, as I've said, by Trump's now head of election integrity, a well-known election denier. When you use sources that aren't the FBI, you can do that. You can say I'm told from this informant and that. But you have to give the magistrate some reason to uh understand that second or third-hand source is credible. Here this secondhand source has who who is actually the origin of the referral has been debunked again and again and again. We're talking about Fulton County where no fewer than 11 times different audits and checks have shown it was safe and secure. And then we have this bozo saying those things. So there's no effort in the affidavit to explain why this bozo is actually a reliable source. And I think they actually wouldn't wouldn't be able to. That's a huge thing that this uh that an affidavit would have to uh include.
It would also need to include some grappling with the problem of staleness. a uh affidavit needs to have fresh evidence so that a magistrate can know there's you're really going to find the evidence there. You can't just say a couple years ago I saw the dead body or the murder weapon. And here we're talking about long since recycled allegations and no effort to show that the things they're talking about have been confirmed or substantiated or investigated at all with for years now. One of the charges is retention of records. And presumably you could try to make the leap that if they were there uh a few years ago and it's an office that runs as it should, which of course the premise of the whole affidavit is it doesn't, they'd still be there. But it's a glaring deficiency that you don't explain to the magistrate why this evidence would be fresh, why you're going to find it there. the kind of deficiency that courts have regularly bounced uh search warrants on the basis of.
Then there's a scope problem basically with this little um hook as to the the crimes well first the possible failure to retain records and second this uh um most exciting of all to Trump evidence perhaps if intentional no proof of that of a denial of voting rights. They seize they carry away 700 boxes of stuff, which by the way had been methodically kept by Fulton County, which would have been in a position to prove, oh, this piece of paper, here's where it was. I if it has to come to court, I can show you it's always been in a chain of custody. That's now been blown out of the water uh for future litigation if it comes up. H and then we have this just like complete black hole at the center of the warrant where if there were intent then there would then these pieces of paper would be evidence of a crime.
So it's I got to say um I I've talked to people looked hard. I do not think this is a magistrate. You have to go to entertain this hypothesis in the age of Trump. I don't think we have a magistrate who was somehow calling it unfair um for Trump, but just someone who I don't know had a bad day or wasn't looking carefully, but quite a quite a bad time to have a bad day cuz this is an important affidavit and important warrant. And now the barn door is open. The feds have this material.
What's so important about it uh is that you could use exactly this. If Trump had had this motherload back in 2020 when he was pleading to Brad Raffensperger, I just got to find 11,980 votes. He would just put his election denier squad on it to make up some crap about this cohort or that cohort enough to maybe get into court and remember his ultimate strategy. you basically just say there's some fraud down there and leave the rest to the Republicans in Congress, foment chaos and take it from there. This is what he would have needed then and what he would need now to do it. And uh while there is a suit pending by Fulton County saying you shouldn't have taken this, give it back to us, that's a hard kind of claim to win.
It may be that in Fulton County, they now have the goods and wherewithal to make all kinds of trouble in the 2026 election, which just to be clear, seems seems the game that's going on here. This isn't about charging people with crimes. I don't think even though Trump talked about in Davos people are going to be charged. I think this is about having the um the the big kind of motherload. And remember, they're trying to do this all over the country, right? Pam Bondi says to Governor Walls, um, maybe we'll go easy on our operation there. If you give us your voting information, like what the hell is that about and where's the connection? They're having a meeting that we need to watch really closely where secretaries of state all from all 50 are going to be invited to um Washington. And I think there will be some pressure to to cough up these materials which can be used to make such mischief.
So this is part of a of a big plan that he's announced publicly as Trump, right? We've got to the the Republicans have to nationalize 15 states. Um and what he has in mind of course are those that could be pivotal or close so that after an election you can have a whole smorgasbord of material to say okay here we'll argue this here we'll claim that and uh here we'll talk about this class of voters etc. This is the building blocks for the kinds of arguments that failed miserably because they were false and lawless in 2020.
So, it's a very flawed um affidavit that a magistrate nevertheless greenlighted and now at least uh they've got the they've got the keys to the kingdom in Fulton County. They're going to be trying all around and it's going to be really important that this trickle not become a flood and that other magistrates and other secretaries of state and state officials are more vigilant and protective of materials that could be used essentially to subvert the wills of their own voters. So, it's really important to be uh have a laser focus on that and in particular see what uh nasty plans the administration has in store at this meeting of of state election officials coming up at the end of the month. Talk to you later.
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