Originally published at: DOJ intends to prove what Trump was up to with those stolen documents | Boing Boing
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Well, one thing’s for sure: he was never going to get around to reading them.
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From that recording:
During the nearly two-minute recording, Trump describes a document as “highly confidential” before saying “this is secret information.” At one point he says, “You probably didn’t believe me, but now you believe me. It’s incredible.”
It makes my head hurt trying to understand how this traitor still walks the Earth a free man.
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Seems pretty clear: his purpose was to show them off like a 3 year old with an ice cream.
“I got ice cream and submarine secrets. You want my ice cream? No! It’s mine! But I will show how close we can get to a Russian sub without being detected. Promise not to tell?”
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This time, we’ve got him!!!
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Capitalism is cutthroat. It’s been my guess from the beginning, like any large business, confidential, incriminating, etc. info is essential and held for future leverage. He saw an opportunity, maybe always part of his POTUS plan, and took off with it.
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Make a hat? Or a brooch? Or a pterodactyl?
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obligatory… NSFW, tho…
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I imagine the DOJ probably knows what it’s doing here, but I sure hope they aren’t setting themselves up for failure by attempting to prove something that shouldn’t need to be proven to nail Trump.
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Proving motive and purpose are usually chancy, so they must feel pretty sure.
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I hope so. They seem to have a pretty damn airtight case on the “did he do the crime?” side of things so I hope they don’t blow it by taking on the “what was he thinking?” part.
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Ever heard of origami?
I’m extremely curious what they’ve got, because it actually feels a little mysterious to me. Not because Trump is complicated, but the opposite. It’s more an issue of which of Trump’s (shallow, obvious) impulses won out.
On the one hand, he’s always looking for a grift, looking to turn something to his financial advantage, so selling secrets is an obvious option, either to specific entities (e.g. Russia) or just in general - but he’s also an idiot. It might not have occurred to him how to fully exploit the information, how much it was potentially worth, and he’d have a hard time finding one of his smarter flunkies to do the work for him and get themselves on the hook for treason.
On the other hand, his ego and childish nature mean retaining documents because they’re trophies he can show off to randos to impress them with no direct financial benefit to him (beyond luring people into Mar-a-Lago memberships) is a viable motivation too.
I suspect it’ll turn out to be some combination, and he was giving away classified information to various countries largely while he was still in office to butter them up for business dealings, in the dumbest possible ways.
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I just finished reading this article linked from Wonkette. The fact is that there are numerous known instances of trump directly sharing top-level intel with adversaries or allies of adversaries.
ETA: The WaPo article referenced here originally asserting that he directly shared intel on Israeli defenses with Russian leadership (sorry it’s not a gift link).
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He was, allegedly, habitually listening in on calls at Mar A Lago, so blackmail for him may just be business as usual.
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