Even the swept up and accidentally taken doesn’t survive being asked for and getting a subpoena for them. His lawyer signed an affidavit and went on the news saying she searched everywhere and got everything. So either she lied, or Trump purposefully held them back. Both are very bad news for the two of them.
The more I'm thinking about this, the worse it seems.
27 of the classified documents were found in his office; 2 of which were marked "Top Secret." Some of the empty folders which once contained classified documents were in his office.
I could maybe understand the storage room, assuming it was massive, with a crap-ton of boxes. Maybe. At least the storage room was supposedly secured.
But these were found in his office. His office that has had a parade of people through it. His office that is potentially cleaned by resort staff. His dagnabbed office.
...Against that backdrop, consider Trump’s “I declassified them” defense — and note what’s missing from it. In the various forms and forums in which he has made it, he has never said that he declassified the materials because he was concerned about over-classification. Nor has he suggested that he declassified them because, although they were properly classified in the first place, his judgment was that the information ought to be in the public domain. Nor has he argued that the materials did not meet the relevant classification criteria — perhaps because they revealed misconduct or malfeasance by other government officers. Trump’s argument is far less sophisticated than any of these. His claim is that he had a “standing order” (for which there is no evidence) that everything he took with him to his private residence was automatically declassified, regardless of what it was.
Trump’s supporters seem to think that, once again, the president has outfoxed his critics. But imagine for a moment that such an order existed (it doesn’t), whether or not it’s relevant to Trump’s potential legal liability (it isn’t). That would mean that Trump declassified some of our most sensitive national security secrets not because he wanted the public to know about them, and not because he thought they were wrongly classified; he did it — if he did it — because he was lazy. In this scenario — this defense, such as it might be — he wanted to make it easier to take what might be the crown jewels of our national security state back and forth with him without having to do what every other government official does; that is, use a “secure compartmentalized information facility,” or SCIF. Secret technology that we don’t want to share with China? Too bad. Human intelligence that could be used to smoke out American agents in foreign governments? Not his problem. Specific details about the deployment of U.S. troops overseas? Whatever.
Trump’s “defense” would mean that he committed what would have to be the most stunning and indefensible systematic breach of our national security not just by any president in American history, but perhaps by any person. Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning may be responsible for putting a greater number of government secrets into the public domain, but they at least had substantive reasons for doing so — whether or not we agree with them. In Trump’s version of events, breaching our national security and potentially exposing secrets happened simply because he couldn’t be bothered to handle classified information correctly. It’s not quite the “Twinkie defense,” the standard for wildly improbable justifications for improper behavior, but it’s not far off.
Even the swept up and accidentally taken doesn’t survive being asked for and getting a subpoena for them. His lawyer signed an affidavit and went on the news saying she searched everywhere and got everything. So either she lied, or Trump purposefully held them back. Both are very bad news for the two of them.
Yes. I was offering the swept up and thrown into boxes as an explanation for the number of empty folders. I don't think it matters in terms of potential criminal liability.
he/him we all just have to live through it,
holding each other’s hands.
But these were found in his office. His office that has had a parade of people through it. His office that is potentially cleaned by resort staff. His dagnabbed office.
Indeed. His office that per his attorney, had a parade of people sweeping through. (hence he wouldn't have been so untidy with his classified docs to spill them all over the floor as was portrayed in the pic)
We can't take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don't have maybe what they're supposed to have. They get rid of some of the people who have been there for 25 years and they work great and then you throw them out and they're replaced by criminals.
More specifically, 27 classified documents were found in Trump's office. There were also 35 empty folders marked as classified.
conclusion: Trump had successfully sold 56% of his inventory before getting "raided".
We can't take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don't have maybe what they're supposed to have. They get rid of some of the people who have been there for 25 years and they work great and then you throw them out and they're replaced by criminals.
When I first saw this (or accounts of it, rather), I just saw it as Trump being, well... Trump (a combination of being daft, and assuming followers are equally daft).
But now, it strikes me that this is an admission that he knew these classified documents were in his office. Not only did he know they were there; he knew they weren't locked in a safe, or in a cabinet, or secured in any way. They were in "cartons."
Being a defense attorney for him must be exhausting.
When I first saw this (or accounts of it, rather), I just saw it as Trump being, well... Trump (a combination of being daft, and assuming followers are equally daft).
But now, it strikes me that this is an admission that he knew these classified documents were in his office. Not only did he know they were there; he knew they weren't locked in a safe, or in a cabinet, or secured in any way. They were in "cartons."
Being a defense attorney for him must be exhausting.
And this is the brain that some folks want to vote back into office.
And for some reason or another that they’re usually not capable of explaining.
When I first saw this (or accounts of it, rather), I just saw it as Trump being, well... Trump (a combination of being daft, and assuming followers are equally daft).
But now, it strikes me that this is an admission that he knew these classified documents were in his office. Not only did he know they were there; he knew they weren't locked in a safe, or in a cabinet, or secured in any way. They were in "cartons."
Being a defense attorney for him must be exhausting.
I’m pretty sure it results in liver damage.
he/him we all just have to live through it,
holding each other’s hands.
I’ma little surprised to see no order from Judge Cannon today. That’s three more days for federal law enforcement to access and use the seized documents in their investigation. They’re perfectly free to do that unless and until the judge orders them to stop.
he/him we all just have to live through it,
holding each other’s hands.
I stopped counting the number of actual TSCI docs at 18, not the covers - the actual TSCI docs.
Why all the empty doc covers though? That is a question.....
The scariest answer to that is very real possibility, perhaps even probability, that they are empty because Trump has already sold their contents to our nation's worst and most dangerous enemies for his own financial gain. There is no doubt that our enemies would gladly huge sums of money for them. I wonder how many courageous covert agents who helped gather vital intelligence about U.S. enemies for our behalf have already been exposed and killed.
Last edited by Gunnar on Sat Sep 03, 2022 8:24 am, edited 2 times in total.
No precept or claim is more suspect or more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.
