Originally published at: Trump's staff moved boxes of classified documents hours before Justice Department came to look for them | Boing Boing
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If the aides moving secret documents around knew what they were doing, that’s highly problematic, but if people without security clearance were moving top secret documents and weren’t aware what they were doing was sensitive, that’s also an issue. The whole scene has very much a mob boss milieu of stashing goods where the cops won’t see them.
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And then they tried to tamper with the security video of them doing it. Because, of course they did.
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My reactions:
We got 'im!
He’ll never serve a minute’s time in jail or prison.
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I’ve seen a couple articles saying the 18 year sentence for Rhodes and some of the longer other sentences “may be intended to send a message to Trump of the seriousness”, which seems crazypants. First, long sentences are a natural consequence of trying to violently overthrow the government, and they weren’t long enough. Secondly, Trump doesn’t care what happens to other people. Third, Trump is incapable of learning.
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WTF does it take for this clown to be charged and found guilty of Obstruction of Justice as the bare minimum of criminality? Shooting the entire investigative and prosecutorial team in broad daylight on 5th Avenue?
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Who tipped them off the FBI were coming?
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I believe this was when TFG was issued a summons to return documents. When the lawers “searched” for them and collected a few, then told the feds to come and get them.
ETA: Subpoena, not summons.
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Wasn’t it the authorities? I don’t think this was supposed to be an adversarial situation. Washington wanted its documents back and was willing to cut the POI some slack. This has always seemed to be the issue. Trump could have ended the entire situation by just giving the documents back. The fact that he didn’t appears to be either hubris, or that he’d already passed them on to his paymasters.
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Trump World really looked like it had successfully both-sides-ified the issue when it was revealed there were classified documents at one of Biden’s offices and one of his houses—then it turned out Mike Pence had some, too. So it went from “both sides do it” to “See? Everyone does it, no big deal!” which is an ideal situation for Trump.
The problem they’re going to have is explaining why Trump refused to return the documents and even sued the government to get them back (both Biden and Pence willingly cooperated with the FBI and the National Archives, so there’s no both-sidesing on that one), why Trump continues to this day to maintain that these government documents belong to him, personally, and why Trump and his stooges were apparently actively hiding documents from the FBI.
When the story broke last summer, Trump World threw every argument they could at the wall, even the ones that contradicted the other ones. You can always plead in the alternative, but at some point you’re going to have to pick a theory and go with it. It can’t both be true that these documents were accidentally packed up and that Trump intentionally took them because he believed they belonged to him and that they fully cooperated with the FBI and that they were hiding documents from the FBI.
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Okay, but what I don’t understand about the whole thing at all is what documents was he so concerned about? That’s the smoking gun. Was he just trying to hoard some random classified documents for funsies, or was it something of significance to him? Why bother hoarding them with such insurance if they weren’t useful to him or someone, but also, why not FBI tell us what they were about generally if it clearly shows he intended to do it maliciously? The whole thing is stupid in a way that only DT can manage.
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A vault filled to capacity with iron-clad evidence, with spotless, unambiguous provenance, a notarized and documented chain of custody, backed by three eye witnesses who all have the same story, and captured on two different camera angles.
Everything associated with Teflon Donnie is going to run through a court system he corrupted with loyalist judges, and is guaranteed to be protested by exactly half of Congress. They have to prepare defenses against every kind of arcane legal tactic his lawyers might even think about trying. And “double jeopardy” means that if a prosecutor so much as farts out of turn the case will be thrown out and he won’t be charged with it again.
If the case against him isn’t 100% airtight from the moment they bring charges, it’s all for naught. It simply takes a massive amount of effort and time to put the entire thing together perfectly.
And it doesn’t stop there. They still have to get through voir dire without letting any hidden MAGAts get on the jury, which could be nearly impossible. (Not to mention that getting out of jury duty will be as easy as wearing a red hat.)
On top of all that, security is going to be insane. Everyone involved in the trial is certain to be threatened or attacked by the armed stupids.
Trump is as far above the law as it is possible to get in this country, and clearly will use every knife in the drawer to keep out of prison.
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The point at which he absolutely has to choose one side is when he is testifying under oath. Which is why his lawyers have always done everything they could to prevent him being sworn in, as he has no compunction about insisting provably false statements are true. The judge will consider it perjury, even if it is his trademark "tough talk that owns the libs.
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Thanks (I think) for the listing of insurmountable hurdles. In the end it probably turns out that T___p’s business sense - because he has none - is not what has served him best in life and especially from 2016 until now. It’s his vast experience gaming the system and in the courts.
In any functioning democracy he would have been arrested the evening of January 6th and be 2+ years into his life sentence. Functioning is the key word.
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“send a message”, this guy doesn’t communicate with anyone or learn anything. The only time he will get it is sitting behind bar. And even then, he will keep screaming from prison that he’s victim of some conspiracy. The only way to minimizing damage to society is putting this one in jail and throw away the key. He got his beer putsch. He will do whatever it takes to get his Fourth Reich out of self-reservation with the indictments and his lust for power.
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when will we find out he photocopied them all along with sending them to his saudi friends
via snapchat with him doing his horrible dance and holding the documents to YMCA.
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fuck his feelings i think is the phrase. because, yeah: it doesn’t matter what ■■■■■ thinks or his supporters think; what matters is limiting the damage he can do, and demonstrating ( like is being done with the jan 6th conspirators ) that there are consequences to trying to overthrow democracy.
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There is one bright spot: like so many other criminals, Trump is narcissistic, extraordinarily careless, and extremely stupid. If anyone above the law can make so many mistakes that they can actually be brought to justice, it’ll be him.
Tl;dr: “He has the right to remain silent – but not the ability.”
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