One thing that Donald Trump has never been accused of, at least by our side, is possessing even a smidgen of a modicum of self awareness or shame. Last night at his classified document case in Fort Pierce, Florida, Trump’s crack legal team introduced into the proceedings a “Motion to Dismiss Based on Spoliation of Evidence in Violation of Due Process.” The evidence referred to being, of course, the scores of office boxes Trump stoled from the American people when he left the White House, and which contained, along with records and documents, classified or otherwise that are explicitly property of the public under the Presidential Records Act (despite Trump’s through-the-looking-glass opposite-world lies), interspersed with personal items, memorabilia and, for all I know, discarded hamberder wrappers.
MSNBC’s crack reporter and daytime host Katie Phang was on the scene to tweet out the text of this ridiculous motion, which contends that the mean old FBI jumbled up the Dotard’s expertly curated boxes (which, of course, were not his boxes) to deprive him of the defense that because the secret nuclear sub capabilities document was stuffed into a box with his dirty crew socks, that we should just forget all about it and go home.
Take it away, Katie:
Late last night, SC Jack Smith filed the Government's Response in Opposition to Trump's Motion to Dismiss Based on Spoliation of Evidence in Violation of Due Process.
Here, in the intro, we are reminded how Donald Trump handled some of our nation's most classified secrets: pic.twitter.com/mVxmaATuRN
— Katie Phang (@KatiePhang) June 25, 2024
As this is an extended thread I used the Threadreader app to arrange Katies commentary into a more easily shared and read format…
Late last night, SC Jack Smith filed the Government’s Response in Opposition to Trump’s Motion to Dismiss Based on Spoliation of Evidence in Violation of Due Process.
Here, in the intro, we are reminded how Donald Trump handled some of our nation’s most classified secrets:
Trump now claims that “the precise order of the items within the boxes when they left the White House was critical to his defense, and, what’s more, that FBI agents executing the search warrant in August 2022 should have known that. However, as SC (Special Counsel) asserts: “…at every stage the agents have maintained the integrity of each container in which the evidence was found, that is, box-to-box integrity.”
Sure. Now we are to believe that these boxes, which were randomly stuffed with sensitive national security materials mixed with detritus and trundled halfway across the country in gross violation of the law, there to be stacked on the floor of a moldy basement, next to the shi**er in a crummy looking bathroom that was last remodeled in 1974, flown off to Bedminster possibly to be secreted into Ivana’s casket and strewn across an office floor, were precisely arranged so as to one day exonerate the huge idiot when he was inevitably caught… and that the FBI should have somehow known that.
Trump also “suggests (for the first time) that he may wish to argue that the classified documents were buried in the boxes and hard to see, or that the placement of classified documents near dated items shows that they were placed in the box long ago and may have been forgotten. But because the overall contents of each box have not changed, Trump can argue both of those things and has everything he needs to do so. Nothing has been lost, much less destroyed, and there has been no bad faith.”
Ok, Dotard, you carefully archived your boxes to create your sure fire alibis, then buried them deep in junk and forgot where they were.
Sheer Genius.
Trump’s “defenses” have evolved and changed over time: “Over many months, Trump has claimed, among other things, that he deliberately declassified the documents, that the FBI planted them, and that he intentionally selected and sent the documents to Mar-a-Lago as his “personal records.”
But in the entire time since the indictment was returned against Trump, “Trump’s counsel have not once asked to review the boxes themselves” and Trump never asserted “any argument stemming from the precise order of the documents until filing this motion in 2024…”
Trump’s strategy seems to be try something’ and if that don’t work, try something’ else.
Per SC: “the warrant and the protocol contemplated two scenarios in which an entire box would be seized. First, if the Filter Team encountered potentially privileged material in a box, the Filter Team would seize and segregate the box for later inspection. Second, if the Filter Team cleared a box—that is, reviewed it and found no privileged materials—it would pass the box to the Case Team, who would review the box for documents with classification markings and seize any box containing such material.”
So, you see, drumpf they were taking great pains not to seize your dirty underwear!
The Response then proceeds to describe in great and methodical detail how the search warrant was executed at MAL. It also sets forth the chain of custody.
Trump’s motion fails to assert “what the order of documents actually showed, instead relying entirely on speculation of what it might have shown.” So, the legal analysis then requires bad faith to be shown for Trump to obtain dismissal or suppression.
Well, guys, you are supposed to Devine Trump’s intention, just as you were supposed to “know” what the crazy man was doing…
The legal analysis also requires that Trump “show that the evidence was likely to significantly contribute to his defense.”
“To meet this standard of constitutional materiality, evidence must both possess an exculpatory value that was apparent before the evidence was destroyed, and be of such a nature that the defendant would be unable to obtain comparable evidence by other reasonably available means.”
WTF possible “exculpatory” evidence could there possibly be for stealing state secrets? The Devil made me do it?
In this case, “no physical evidence has been destroyed, and Trump does not and could not contend that the precise ordering of documents within boxes that he unquestionably possessed and were filled with his belongings could exonerate him.”
Trump claims that he may have just “overlooked” classified documents because of where they were positioned in the boxes and that he may have put classified materials into boxes “years before” and forgotten they were in there before they went to MAL.
Pick a lane dude.
And HERE is where, once again, Trump’s prior legal filings come to bite him:
“Trump’s filings in the Special Master litigation also undermine the position he takes here. There, Trump argued that ‘personal documents, photographs, and items such as clothing are by definition not ‘contraband’ and thus may not be lawfully seized, and that any such items that were seized must be returned.'”
“His position there—that the Constitution prohibited agents from seizing or retaining any documents not marked classified—cannot be reconciled with his current claim that the Constitution required the agents not only to seize all non-classified documents in proximity to the classified documents, but to retain them in precisely the intra-box order in which they were found.”
Well, obviously, if Trump put a gummy bear in there you were not allowed to search the box – sheesh.
Throughout this litigation Trump has claimed that “he is entitled to dismissal because he made a conscious decision as president to designate classified documents as personal records and transfer them from the White House to Mar-a-Lago.”
And HERE is where Trump’s Truth Social posts come back to bite him:
“And before he latched onto the PRA as a defense, Trump made public statements that he had made a decision to declassify the documents, further casting doubt on the viability or predictability of a defense that he was ignorant of the boxes’ contents.”
Nice try tho.
And here SCO explains that “There is no question that these were Trump’s boxes, and no one else’s. He collected their contents over time, he decided what was to be included, he kept them in his bedroom at the White House, he controlled their whereabouts, he helped pack some of them for Mar-a-Lago, he had them delivered to Mar-a-Lago, he directed Mar-a-Lago employees in mid-2021 to fix up the storage room so his boxes could be moved there, and agents searched them in the basement of his residence. And it is not as though agents discovered items in the boxes plainly belonging to someone else. To the contrary, the agents found boxes full of keepsakes valuable only to Trump.”
Well, it is his roach motel…
Thank you so very much Katie, your detailed reporting of events is impeccable. Critical to have an accurate account as history demands it. Your reporting is invaluable.
— RC (@RCinNC1) June 25, 2024
Hear hear.
Excellent reporting, Katie.
We have never accused him of possessing a smidgen of a modicum of self awareness or shame nor have we ever accused him of having one iota of intelligence. The stupidity barrel he wallows in has no bottom.
PERSONAL documents??
I was always under the impression that government papers belonged to the, err, government’
To be accurate, security notwithstanding, he basically stole government records – and it doesn’t matter if they were packed along with his big boy diapers and were just the daily agenda, they still weren’t his.
The security breach is just the icing on the cake (well it would be if a loose cannon wasn’t using salt instead of icing sugar)
I am looking forward to his judge/legal whore trying to justify making this shitshow into a Tony winning Broadway show.
Who would have guessed, trump can add hoarding to his list of mental illnesses.
As an aside, Andy Warhol has a collection of boxes he called Time Capsules. He basically packed up a box with what ever happened to be around at the time. He then sent them to a storage unit. He managed to store over 600 of these Time Capsules. Of course nothing from Warhol’s boxes were classified documents, and they were kept in a relatively secure location unlike trumps bedroom, bathroom and pool room.
Damn that Jack! Didn’t he know he and his team were supposed to separate the shit stained whitie tiddies from the golf shirts, wash, dry, fold and return them? Incompetent bastard. Hey…if you can’t handle the laundry then don’t raid the joint!