Prosecutors continue to bear down on Mar-a-Lago, weeks after they seized reams of government documents that former President Trump was holding at his South Florida estate.
I found this link informative as to the notice to the TFG White House (especially “Attachments to March 30, 2017 letter” from Archives aka NARA.) It informed TFG obligations under the Presidential Records Act (PRA:)
Was Patel named as the designated person regarding Archives, because the previous NARA liason (former WH Counsel Don McGahn) wouldn’t go along with TFG’s treachery?
He’s guilty of all of these, and more besides, and FBI and Garland’s DOJ have the receipts (and, I suspect, the corrupt Chris Wray has been told “Do this right, motherfucker, and you might avoid indictment yourself”).
Nothing.
Not until the next raid or the indictment comes out. And that’s just the way I like it. Don’t tip the hand, folks.
It’s pretty remarkable that the FBI was tossing Trump’s shit all day long before anybody caught wind of it. Garland’s DOJ does not leak.
Three weeks on, and I’m still marveling at that.
Why isn’t there more reporting and focus on Trump’s long-standing debts to Russia and Saudi Arabia and other awful regimes? And Biden revoked Trump’s clearance so it doesn’t matter if Trump declassified the information or not. As long as it’s still marked classified, Trump has no right to have those documents.
But all of that is beside the point. Trump obvious kept those documents, and lied about it and has fought the government all along when national security was at issue. That alone defeats any defense he might have and allows a judge or jury to infer Trump’s motives were self-serving (as opposed to grossly negligent) and they he gathered and then held the documents because they had value to him. Maybe as insurance, maybe as blackmail or as a veiled threat to the government, maybe for profit, maybe to repay debts to his foreign friends who financed his failing empire.
Somewhere in this whole thing is a nexus between Trump’s finances and his access to state secrets. I’m hoping the DoJ and FBI are digging into all of it had hit him with a massive indictment, the soon the better for national security and the future of our democracy.
I await the final verdict will be along the lines of the end of The Producers; "We, the jury, find the defendant(s) incredibly guilty!
I don’t want a massive indictment – too many moving parts that TFG can latch on to in an attempt to derail the entire case. Better to keep it tight and focused – that way DOJ can take it to trial in less than three months. And DC juries would love to lock him up.
Perfectly guilty
Josh’s focus here is national security, but I think the obstruction statute (on the warrant) may deserve consideration. It seems altogether possible, if not likely, that Trump stole National Defense Information so as to obstruct investigation into himself. The possibilities are many–Russia links, the Ukraine impeachment to begin with.
Not to say of course that would be his only reason for stealing NDI. He’s a guy who’s never short of reasons to break the law.
I would tend to agree, but for the Fascist Five up there at SCOTUS. The case needs to be big enough and bad enough to make it really toxic for them to try and spring Fat Boy.
The most likely basis for citing the obstruction statute is that false attestation he had the lawyers write that there were no more classified docs at Mar-a-GoGo. It’s possible he was covering up J6 documents too, though it seems unlikely to me that he would be hoarding anything inculpating him for J6 instead of destroying it. I very much doubt he would get hit with obstruction for Russia/Ukraine material, for the simple reason that there isn’t any active investigation into those matters.
Trump the extortionist is a great angle, and might be the answer to Josh’s oft-posed query about why he took the documents. Using the CIA as a national version of panty-sniffing tabloid reporters is yet another novel way that Trump has reached execrable new lows.
Which makes me laugh all the harder at the folks who constantly whine “nothing’s happening, nothing’s happening!” just because nothing is plastered in the headlines.
the discipline of the Garland DOJ is admirable and this, I must say, confirms my faith that we are going to find out everything that can be publicly known about FatAss’s treachery.
My fear is Trump will be found guilty but never go to jail.
Trump’s kids and some friends might just to warn others not to kiss a dumb asses ass.
It suggests that they may have evidence to suggest that the information was somehow transmitted to another, or caused to be transmitted.
I’m still wondering the FBI had an informant at the golf tournament in NJ just a couple of days before the search was carried out, who had heard tfg trying to close deal selling the documents to the Saudis or someone else there.
This would explain the timing of the search and this bit about “transmitted or caused to be transmitted,” and why the magistrate judge, who does not strike me as a never-trumper type, to be very easily persuaded to issue the warrant.
Guilty. Bigly.
He will die of malignant narcissism before his reporting date. His brain will be unable to bear the indignity of prison, and it will therefore stroke him out.
Per statements from Kash Patel cited in the affidavit, Trump issued orders to declassify reams of records, but was thwarted by incompetent or corrupt staff who failed to change the classification markings on boxes of records.
Staff that was so incompetent that they couldn’t read his thoughts.