I suppose we could start out looking on the bright side here. After this, the talk of Hillary Clinton’s email server should finally, fine-all-eee be put to rest. If you’re just now tuning in, the Washington Post broke a story Thursday afternoon stating that Donald Trump took boxes of documents which were clearly marked classified and even top secret down to Mar-a-Lago. Who knows, maybe they used the docs for coasters one night when they ran out of cocktail napkins at the bar?

That is pretty much the image that comes to mind. Washington Post:

It is not precisely clear who packed up the classified materials at Mar-a-Lago, or how they got there in the first place. Trump was very secretive about the packing of boxes that were retrieved from Mar-a-Lago last month, and did not let other aides — including some of his most senior advisers — look at them, according to people close to him.

During his time in the White House, Trump often took official documents with him to his residence to review, accruing piles of records over time, according to people familiar with Trump’s record-keeping practices. […]

Officials had to the scramble to pack up before Joe Biden took office, and one person familiar with the events surmised that some of the documents from the residence likely made their way into boxes destined for Mar-a-Lago rather than being turned over as they should have been. One adviser said Trump began reviewing materials in December after staff received the requests from Gary Stern, a longtime Archives lawyer.

Over the summer, the Archives reached out about high-profile documents that did not seem to be among those turned over, a person familiar with the matter said. Those included correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that Trump once described as “love letters,” as well as a letter left for Trump by President Barack Obama, the person said. The National Archives also inquired about a map of Hurricane Dorian that had been altered with a black marker by Trump in a failed attempt to show he had not been wrong about the storm’s path, the person said.

Trumpty wanted to keep his hurricane map, oh yes indeed. He probably planned to be photographed with that for the cover of TIME when he gets back into office in 2024 and straightens out the National Weather Bureau and everything else. He was right about that hurricane, just like he was right about the stolen election.

Trump’s years-long defiance of the Presidential Records Act, which requires the preservation of memos, letters, notes, emails, faxes and other written communications related to a president’s official duties, and other unusual record keeping practices have long drawn scrutiny. In 2018, for example, Politico reported on his penchant for ripping up official documents. But in recent weeks, Trump’s activities have generated new attention — in large part because of the House select committee’s investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. […]

Even with documents marked classified found where they don’t belong, prosecutors have a high legal bar to get to criminal charges. Prosecutors would have to prove someone intentionally mishandled the material or was grossly negligent in doing so — which can be a steep hurdle in its own right. And Trump, as president, would have had unfettered latitude to declassify material, potentially raising even bigger challenges to bringing a case against him.

Former federal prosecutor Brandon Van Grack said that some of the laws about classified information require someone to act “without authorization, and potentially the president would be able to argue he gave himself that authorization.”

This is going to be another screaming mess. We literally at this point have no idea what our exposure as a nation is or how many of our foreign intelligence operatives have been compromised. And we grimly suspected all this from the first day that Jared Kushner started reading the Presidential Daily Brief avidly and discussing it with his well heeled new BFF Mohammad bin Salman. It’s known that Kushner told MBS who the disloyal members of his royal family were. Who knows how many people have been dismembered with bone saws that we will never hear about as a result of the abject corruption and immorality of the Trump administration, particularly the family members? If our foreign allies never trusted us again after this, who could blame them?

Here’s Mitt Romney to frame the matter with characteristic understatement.

So say we all, Mitt, but it was the members of your party that voted to keep the bum in office. Just saying.

And Tommy Tuberville wants to blame it on somebody else.

Elizabeth de la Vega is a 21 year former federal prosecutor assigned to organized crime, and a past Stanford Law Pro Bono, also a lecturer.

Who knows what Melania has already sold as an NFT? And you want to know the truth? Trump was probably poring over the top secret documents with precisely that in mind, what could he use to make a buck? Or make Vlad happy? You know damn well he doesn’t understand the greater import of what any of those documents meant.

 

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15 COMMENTS

  1. It wasn’t ‘a cardboard box’ – it was FIFTEEN of them and they also contained gifts and artifacts. I do hope the White House staff are doing an inventory check to see what else may be missing

  2. Well this certainly would help to explain the reason Chinese nationals were found aimlessly wandering the property at Mango-Lardo.

    *nods*

    • Lol. Shoot an email to Rachel Maddow. Ask her to use that nickname just once. The democrats should contact Michael Keaton to see if he’d do a version of the sleazebag ghost in Beetlejuice. “Hey folks. Come on down to Mango-Lardo. Why I’ve got a pair of Michele’s pantyhose. Now that’s a babe. Know whadda mean? You need somethin torn to bits? Taxes? Love notes from an angry exwife? Loves notes from a certain dictator? Come on down to Mango-Lardo. I’m the shreddingest muther u ever saw. Just get on ur knees, raise ur hands to the sky, & say my name over & over. Here at Mango-Lardo.”

  3. If anyone thinks Vlad wasn’t given top secret documents/information from 45 – dream on. 45 was owned by Vlad. He was, and continues to be, a clear and present danger.

  4. First, I call bullshit on Tuberville’s rationalization. I’d bet a fake gold toilet that Trump DID specifically order those boxes (every one, and who knows what else?) to be taken down to him home in FL. I can easily picture him being shown boxes marked classified, and being requested to go through them to at least separate out classified vs. unclassified stuff (even though ALL of it should have gone straight to the archives) and Trump getting nasty and saying he wasn’t about to take the time to “go through all that shit.” And then ORDERING staff to just send the boxes to FL. In fact, given that some staffers apparently did follow the law and send stuff over to the archives boxes like that are the type he might have personally watch get loaded up with other stuff going to FL! So there’s that.

    As for prosecution there is ample evidence in the public record and I’m sure sworn under oath by various staffers about Trump’s violations of the PRA. That means that “intent” that pundits always agonize about (when it’s important people at least – not so much when it’s low level/regular folks where the standard is “ignorance of the law is no excuse”) shouldn’t be a problem. Even if he didn’t read them and was fantasizing about Vlad sending him Russian hookers for golden shower shows in the Lincoln Bedroom when the WH Counsel explained it to him and he had to sign various stuff on his first day he was informed and acknowledged with his signature he’d been told about preservation of records and the specifics of communications such as only on govt. cell phones and stuff like that! Not to mention (again, both from reporting but also surely through sworn testimony) his being told after ripping stuff up that by law it was supposed to be preserved and eventually sent to the National Archives! We’ve got multiple counts of federal crimes here. And not just “M.O.M.” but MOMI! Means, Opportunity Motive AND Intent! WTF else does DOJ need at this point?

    Yes, I realize the gravity of even in old times prosecuting a former President but had it not been for Ford’s pardon Nixon would have been and he would have been convicted. This is pretty low hanging fruit from where I sit. We are way the hell past “Gravely concerned.”

  5. Mitty…another graduate of the Susan Collins School for Concerned Senators. Upon graduation u get a monogrammed box of tissue & a gold plated pin to sign whatever the party says.

    • True but at least he is speaking out (kind of). I have not heard a peep out of Ms. Pearl Clutcher on this one. Sad speaking out on any and all issues concerning former guy’s criminality is grounds for losing one’s office. Our nation is in a very sorry state.

  6. I think so little of Trump that I honestly do believe he took off with those classified files because he just wanted souvenirs from his time in the White House. I think even less of his diminishing mental capacity so I can buy that he labored under the delusion that he thought those files were his personal property for being President.

    • Souvenirs? Nah. He has stuff he thinks may be of value if he trades it or sells it to someone else. The files his personal property – shit – the whole damned country and world were his, in his mind, when he was POTUS. He still believes he can do and say anything without impunity. He gave Kim stuff, Putin stuff and who else? And by stuff I mean – top secret information?!!!!!

      • Thinking of him as a rational, functional person (albeit an evil one) is a continual mistake people who oppose Trump make at their peril. It assumes a competence that has never been in evidence, a cleverness that only he could believe in and a sense of strategy the 1/6 Committee’s investigation keeps proving was a mirage he desperately wanted you to believe in. As such, none of the above is going to need to proven to be true.

  7. Do we need to be concerned about how or if former guy uses the documents he illegally removed? Probably. Should he go so far as to share or SELL (most likely) what is in the documents, I should think his ass would be in the wringer. That WOULD be treason. His possible claims of “declassifying” documents would not hold up when the various and sundry people who need to know such things, and do not, come forward to state the documents were still classified. And I think one would have to be as stupid as former guy to think he can declassify anything other than what toilet paper he now uses since he is out of office.

    D.O.J. ought to be all over this one. Unfortunately, knowing Garland, they probably are not even thinking about the possible scenarios that would develop. THAT is the truly troubling part of all this.

  8. He is without a doubt the most crooked person to ever hold the office of POTUS, and he just keeps getting away with it all, then runs his mouth about other’s, when he’s the culprit. He thinks he’s still in office and runs the show, and probably does, since nothing happens to him. Soo many people I know, can’t even stand to look at him.

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