Thanks to the revelations about the material found at Mar-a-Lago, I have learned more about the arcane bureaucratic processes involving the various levels of classification and the processes by which they can be declassified than I ever wanted to know. This is because since classified documents were found on the premises, the initial defenses by Trump’s supporters, that the search was done as a form of harassment of a totally innocent person who had done nothing wrong, have collapsed and have kept shifting to more technical arguments.

This article explains what is going on, starting with the three kinds of classified documents found by the FBI.

FBI agents seized 11 sets of documents from Trump’s Palm Beach club on Monday, including documents  identified as “Various classified/TS/SCI documents,” according to the inventory unsealed Friday. The list of items taken also notes that agents carted away four sets of documents marked “top-secret,” three sets of documents marked “secret” and three sets documents marked “confidential.”

These sets of documents range in classification levels, depending on the degree of their significance to U.S. national security. According to the federal regulations governing classification, “confidential” denotes the lowest rung. Information at this level could, if wrongly disclosed, cause “identifiable damage” to national security.  “The next level, “secret” information, could cause serious damage to national security if wrongly disclosed. The “top secret” designation is reserved for material whose unauthorized disclosure could cause “exceptionally grave damage” to national security.

The “SCI” designation is an abbreviation for “Sensitive Compartmented Information” and refers to classified information involving sensitive intelligence sources, methods or analytical processes, and which can only be discussed within a “SCIF” — a “Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility” — a secure room or building limited to government officials with a corresponding security clearance. 

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Some details of the search of Trump’s Florida residence have been released. It appears that FBI agents did find documents marked ‘Top Secret’ after all at Mar-A-Lago.

The most sensitive set of documents removed from Trump’s post-presidency home in Florida were listed generically as “Various Classified/TS/SCI” – the abbreviation for top secret/sensitive compartmented information – the warrant shows.

FBI agents retrieved a total of 11 sets of classified documents, some of which were marked top secret, the Wall Street Journal first reported. Federal agents also took away four sets of top secret documents, three sets of secret documents, and three sets of confidential documents, the receipt showed.

The search warrant receipt did not provide any further detail about the substance of the classified documents. Other materials removed from Mar-a-Lago included binders of photos, information on the “President of France”, and a grant of clemency for the Trump political operative Roger Stone.

Caught at the center of a rapidly escalating controversy, Trump lashed out at the justice department on Friday, saying in a statement that he had declassified all of the records in question. “It was all declassified,” Trump asserted.

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We are living at a time when conspiracy theories abound and where over-the-top reactions to the most routine of events have become the norm. A perfect example of this has been the reaction among Trump supporters to the execution by the FBI of a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, the current home of Donald Trump. While searching of the home of a former president is undoubtedly unprecedented, everything else about the process was perfectly ordinary. In fact, the department of justice seemed to have gone out of its way to do this by the book because of the its unprecedented nature.

The FBI first went all the way to the top and got approval from the Attorney General to ask for the warrant and then went, as required, to a federal judge claiming that they had probable cause for the search. You ca be sure that since a former president was involved, there was a high bar that had to be cleared in order to get the warrant. They then carried out the search with little fuss and with the cooperation of the Secret Service agents guarding the premises and with the president’s representatives apparently also present. There was no raid, no pre-dawn breaking down of the doors by armed agents, and the other kinds of things that ordinary people might be subjected to at the hands of law enforcement. In fact, no one knew about the search until Trump blasted out the news in his usual hyperbolic fashion that he was being persecuted. And as usual in their knee-jerk reaction, his loyal cult members in Congress and the nation at large responded hysterically, comparing this action to Nazi Germany and the Gestapo. They have even gone to the extent of suggesting that the FBI planted evidence at the site, a charge that they will repeat if any damning evidence is revealed. Planting of evidence by law enforcement undoubtedly happens but it seems unlikely in this case.
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As is almost always the case with Trump, he exaggerates things. On Monday evening, he announced that his Mar-a-Lago home “is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents”. It is not clear if this was, in actual fact, an FBI ‘raid’ in the usual sense. Those usually occur in the pre-dawn hours where armed agents break into a house, the surprise supposedly necessary to prevent the destruction of evidence. According to this report, what happened was far less dramatic.
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During Alex Jones’s trial, it was revealed that his lawyers had inadvertently sent all the text messages on his cell phone over a two-year period to the lawyers of the people who were suing him. The texts revealed that Jones had lied while under oath during a deposition.

I wondered at that time what other damaging information might be on those texts, given Jones’s reckless nature. It seems that he had also sent nude photos of his wife to Trump advisor Roger Stone. It is not clear if his wife had consented to this act. If she did consent, then the story ends there. If she didn’t, she can take action against Jones depending on local laws since it is a crime in some states to disclose intimate photos of someone without that person’s consent. In 2021, his wife was arrested for domestic violence against him so the relationship seems fraught.

Jones is not happy about this latest development.

And now that his lawyer in these current legal issues appeared to have accidentally released two years’ worth of information from his phone, Alex thinks she is going to use it against him with his kids.

“I know the texts and information on his phone will be evidence of all the nefarious, truly conspiratorial things said between him and his employees in their plans to keep my kids from me,” Alex told Insider, per Yahoo! News. “It’s not even about my kids, it’s about control. Controlling me.”

It is a bit rich for Jones, the baseless conspiracy king, to complain that these texts will be used to create ‘nefarious’ conspiracy theories about him.

The congressional committee investigating the events of January 6, 2021 has requested the Jones text dossier as part of its work so now all this information will be in their hands as well. Jones’s ex-wife is also suing him over custody of the three children they had together and she may seek these texts as well to support her claim that he is unstable and should not have custody.

I suspect that it is only a matter of time before these texts leak to the media. I hope they do not publish the photos of Jones’s wife. They have no value other than to satisfy prurient interests.

The other shoe dropped in the Alex Jones case as the jury ordered him to pay $45.2 million in punitive damages to the parents of a child who was murdered in the Sandy Hook massacre, bringing the total up to $49.3 million.

It is still less than the value of his reported assets but is more than a slap on the wrist.

Legal wrangling that is standard after these types of cases – including a promised appeal – means the amount Jones ultimately pays may be far below $49.3m. But the ruling nonetheless represents a victory for loved ones of Sandy Hook victims and a major rebuke for one of the country’s most notorious conspiracy theorists.
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The jury’s award Thursday was to compensate Heslin and Lewis for Jones’s actions. The one Friday – doled out after about four hours of deliberations – was meant to punish Jones for conduct the jurors, through their unanimous decision, found to be egregious.

Jones’ appeal would aim to drastically reduce the jury’s award against him – if not eliminate it altogether. [His lawyer] Reynal on Friday had argued that $270,000 in punitive damages was fair, relying on a state law capping such damages a significant amount below what the jury awarded.
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The baseless Sandy Hook conspiracy is far from the only theory of that kind which Jones has propagated on Infowars, which is often derided in some quarters for selling pills marketed as helping men achieve firmer erections.

He also lied about a Washington DC pizzeria being the home to a child sex-abuse ring, inspiring a man to go there and fire a high-powered rifle inside. Another centered on a myth that a yogurt factory supported child rapists who spread tuberculosis.

Jones was forced to apologize for both of those. He did not appear to be in the courtroom for the reading of Friday’s verdict.

There are as yet two more cases against him, one in Texas and another in Connecticut.

The jury has ordered Alex Jones to pay $4.1 million to the parents of Jesse Hill as compensatory damages for the pain that he (and his mindless supporters) inflicted on them by his reckless claims that the Sandy Hook massacre in which Jesse died was a hoax and that the grieving parents were crisis actors.

The lawyers had asked for $150 million so this is a lot less but it could have been a much worse. The jury in Texas had to award something since Jones had already had a default judgment against him but they could have levied a nominal fine of just $1 if they had sided with him.

The trial is not over though. This award was just for compensation for the suffering of the parents and is meant to represent the costs of the real injury they suffered. The jury now has to decide on whether to award punitive damages against Jones. Punitive damages are meant as punishment for reckless and egregious behavior, in order to send a message and deter future such actions and hence it is hard to put a figure to it. Since it is meant to inflict pain, it depends on how much they think the person has in assets, since there is little point in a financial penalty that the defendant can easily afford.
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We know that Alex Jones lies and lies brazenly. In a surprising development, his lies have now been exposed in court during the trial to determine how much damages Alex Jones should pay Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of Jesse Heslin who was murdered at Sandy Hook, the parents’s lawyer Mark Bankston dramatically revealed a lie that Jones has made. It was exposed because Jones’s lawyers had inadvertently sent copies of all the text messages on Jones’s phone to Bankston.

In a remarkable moment, Bankston disclosed to Jones and the court that he had recently acquired evidence proving Jones had lied when he claimed during the discovery process that he had never texted about the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting.

Bankston said that Jones’ attorney had, in an apparent mishap, sent him two years of cell phone records that included every text message Jones had sent.

The cell phone records, Bankston said, showed that Jones had in fact texted about the Sandy Hook shooting.

“That is how I know you lied to me when you said you didn’t have text messages about Sandy Hook,” Bankston said.

Bankston showed Jones a text message exchange he had about Sandy Hook. But Jones testified that he had “never seen these text messages.”

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