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Fox WH correspondent: Member of Trump Secret Service detail might have triggered Mar-a-Lago warrant [1]
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Date: 2022-08-15
Heinrich dropped this theory on Friday morning.
x THREAD: A federal law enforcement source tells me probable cause for search warrant ‘very likely’ came from a secret service member. — Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) August 11, 2022
x This evidence is typically obtained in one of two ways:
1) a Title 3 wiretap intercepting conversations
and/or
2) a well-placed source giving real-time information to law enforcement. — Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) August 11, 2022
x Therefore, it would seem more likely than not that the probable cause for the search warrant was based on information provided by the President’s Secret Service security detail. — Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) August 11, 2022
When I saw this roll across my phone, I remembered reading last year that even some of Trump’s biggest gadflies hoped that Trump could be nailed to the wall without having to call members of his Secret Service detail as witnesses (diaried here). According to retired agent Jim Funk, when courts ruled that Secret Service agents could be compelled to testify against sitting presidents, it created a “slippery slope” because the very nature of their job requires them to be “close to the president in some capacity.”
But if there were ever a case for an exception to that concern, it is when an agent learns that a current or former president is engaging in blatantly criminal and treasonous conduct. In that case, they would be doubly obligated to report it. Besides the general legal obligation to report observations of criminal conduct, Secret Service agents are sworn to defend the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
The closest parallel I can think of is the reluctance of doctors to testify in malpractice cases. One of the few exceptions to that principle came during the saga of Christopher Duntsch, the Dallas neurosurgeon who killed two patients and maimed 31 others in less than two years before his license was revoked. He was ultimately convicted of maiming one of them, Mary Efurd, and was sentenced to life in prison. The prosecutor who led that case, Michelle Shugart, told CNBC’s American Greed that she was surprised when several of the surgeons who had been responsible for exposing Duntsch’s misdeeds lined up demanding to testify against him. This took Shugart by surprise, since in her experience doctors almost never testified against each other.
However, Duntsch’s pursuers apparently felt that Duntsch’s actions were so egregious that they more than met the threshold for an exception to that rule. One of them, Randall Kirby, even went as far as to call Dunstch a “sociopath” in a letter to the Texas Medical Board. He and Duntsch’s other lead pursuer, Robert Henderson, actually went to prosecutors because they believed jailing him wasthe only way to keep Duntsch from practicing medicine elsewhere after Texas revoked his license.
This would appear to be no different. On the face of it, we are looking at one of the worst security breaches in American history, if not THE worst. That more than dwarfs any concerns about a slippery slope being triggered by a Secret Service agent testifying against a current or former president. To my mind, that would more than meet the threshold of “beyond probable cause.”
Heinrich is one of the few outposts of serious journalism at Fox News. She’s even fact-checked right-wingers—including some at her own network—who are wringing their hands over the IRS being greenlighted to hire more agents.
x In light of reports Inflation Reduction Act funding is going toward hiring IRS agents “legally allowed to carry a firearm” & “willing to use deadly force if necessary” – — Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) August 13, 2022
x IRS CI agents are what’s known as an ‘1811’ or federal criminal investigator, a special law enforcement agent who in the case of the IRS CI, typically works big public corruption, narcotics, and money laundering cases. The average American would never encounter an IRS CI agent. — Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) August 13, 2022
If her reporting is accurate and a Secret Service agent was the likely trigger for the search on Mar-a-Lago, that agent may very well have saved the republic.
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/15/2116836/-Fox-WH-correspondent-Member-of-Trump-Secret-Service-detail-might-have-triggered-Mar-a-Lago-warrant
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