This is the stuff that black comedy is made of and it would be hilarious if we literally were not in a Dr. Strangelove, Doomsday scenario. Nuclear secrets are no laughing matter and the material which Donald Trump removed from the White House could end up getting people killed, literally.
He doesn’t get that. He thinks that since he was prez for four years that he’s entitled to souvenirs. The latest wrinkle is that today the New York Times is reporting that two senior aides to Trump, Pat Cipollone and Patrick Philbin, have been interviewed by the FBI in connection with the removal of classified documents from the White House. They were interviewed in connection with tracing the documents that should have been turned over to the National Archives, and would have been in any normal administration, but which went missing and then ended up in a pool storage closet at Trump’s Florida country club.
As stated, the mixture of the faux-billionaire playboy idiot waltzing out of Washington with Top Secret documents would make a delightful Pink Panther movie, but this is real life and the consequences are stomach churning, to say the least.
Mr. Cipollone and Mr. Philbin were Mr. Trump’s representatives to deal with the National Archives; they were named to the positions shortly before the president’s term ended, in January 2021. At some point after National Archives officials realized they did not have Trump White House documents, which are required to be preserved under the Presidential Records Act, they contacted Mr. Philbin for help returning them.
A spokesperson for Mr. Philbin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Philbin tried to help the National Archives retrieve the material, two of the people familiar with the discussions said. But the former president repeatedly resisted entreaties from his advisers.
“It’s not theirs, it’s mine,” several advisers say Mr. Trump told them.
Do you love it? What 3-year-old hasn’t screamed “MIIINNE” when needing to give up something that didn’t in fact belong to him, but that he nevertheless wanted to keep. Say what you will about any other president in history, smart or dumb, they were at least grown adult men. Trump is not.
The former president returned 15 boxes of material to the National Archives in January, but the Justice Department issued a subpoena in May for documents that were still at his residence. On June 3, counterintelligence officials with the Justice Department’s national security division went to Mar-a-Lago to collect remaining documents with classified markings.
At that point, at least one Trump lawyer signed a statement saying material with the classified markings had been returned, according to four people familiar with the document. But officials then used a subpoena to obtain surveillance footage of the hallway outside a storage room at Mar-a-Lago and saw something that alarmed them. They also received information from at least one witness who indicated that more material might remain at the residence, people familiar with the investigation said.
Trump “lawyers” had no problems signing statements that one thing had happened when in fact something else had taken place. That’s why a lot of Trump’s lawyers ended up disbarred and/or incarcerated.
The F.B.I. has reached out to about a half-dozen people who currently work for Mr. Trump and who might know what documents he may still have in his possession.
Meanwhile, Trump is complicating the issue by insisting that he know whose names were on the affidavit. So far the DOJ has responded that revealing that at this time would only complicate the investigation.
The DOJ also says they intend to keep the underlying affidavit sealed, because prosecutors note it “would serve as a roadmap to the government’s ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its direction and likely course, in a manner that is highly likely to compromise future investigative steps,” according to ABC News.
As explosive as this is, it’s only going to get hotter.
LOL
😛
#TraitorTrump
I’m curious about one ting though: just WHY were his passports packed along with government documents?
Was it so that his non-expired one would be handy to grab when he decamped with the box(es)?
He probably liked to look at them and dream of schmoozing with Important People again. They likely were in that “leatherbound box” with other papers.
Emptywheel’s theory of how it worked, in a picture:
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Screen-Shot-2022-08-16-at-1.05.34-PM-1030×582.png