I have purposely stayed away from this topic, mostly due to lack of any details whatsoever. We now have enough information to look at things from several different directions.
The Wall Street Journal reports FBI Recovered Eleven Sets of Classified Documents in Trump Search.
FBI agents who searched former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home Monday removed 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked as top secret and meant to be only available in special government facilities, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation agents took around 20 boxes of items, binders of photos, a handwritten note and the executive grant of clemency for Mr. Trump’s ally Roger Stone, a list of items removed from the property shows. Also included in the list was information about the “President of France,” according to the three-page list. The list is contained in a seven-page document that also includes the warrant to search the premises which was granted by a federal magistrate judge in Florida.
The list includes references to one set of documents marked as “Various classified/TS/SCI documents,” an abbreviation that refers to top-secret/sensitive compartmented information. It also says agents collected four sets of top secret documents, three sets of secret documents, and three sets of confidential documents. The list didn’t provide any more details about the substance of the documents.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers argue that the former president used his authority to declassify the material before he left office. While a president has the power to declassify documents, there are federal regulations that lay out a process for doing so.
The search and seizure warrant, signed by U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, shows that FBI agents sought to search “the 45 Office,” as well as “all storage rooms and all other rooms or areas within the premises used or available to be used by [the former president] and his staff and in which boxes or documents could be stored, including all structures or buildings on the estate.”
The Claim
To the Justice Department, the search was the result of a months-long effort to get the classified documents remaining in Mr. Trump’s possession after at least two prior attempts. They were at first primarily interested in securing the documents, but pursued a criminal investigation as they began to doubt that Mr. Trump’s team was being forthright about the documents still in their possession, people familiar with the matter said.
The Counterclaim
To Mr. Trump’s allies, the search was a heavy-handed approach to obtaining documents they say Mr. Trump was willing to return and was in the process of negotiating the return. Mr. Trump, in a post on his social-media platform Thursday, said his representatives had been “cooperating fully” and added, “The government could have had whatever they wanted, if we had it.”
Pure Speculation
The Washington Post reports FBI searched Trump’s home to look for nuclear documents and other items, sources say
Trump Calls It a Hoax
Nuclear weapons issue is a Hoax, just like Russia, Russia, Russia was a Hoax, two Impeachments were a Hoax, the Mueller investigation was a Hoax, and much more. Same sleazy people involved. Why wouldn’t the FBI allow the inspection of areas at Mar-a-Lago with our lawyer’s, or others, present. Made them wait outside in the heat, wouldn’t let them get even close – said “ABSOLUTELY NOT.” Planting information anyone? Reminds me of a Christofer Steele Dossier!
That is Trump’s comment on Truth Social.
Q&A
Q: Does this look politically motivated?
A: Of course it does, and that easily could be part of it, purposely, by Trump.
Q: Does that mean the search was unwarranted?
A: Not necessarily. We do not have enough information.
Q: Could the FBI plant information?
A: 20 boxes worth?
Q: What’s in the boxes?
A: Given they are top secret, we will likely never find out?
Q: Can Trump declassify anything?
A: Apparently, but only if he goes through procedures. It was this aspect and answer that kept me away from the topic all this while. It now appears that a claim of “I declassified these documents” is insufficient. And if there are indeed nuclear or other extremely sensitive documents in the items taken, Trump would not or at least should not have declassified them.
Q: Trump said he would have handed over this material and no raid was necessary.
A: This saga went on for months if not longer. So, why didn’t he?
Q: What was Trump doing with 20 boxes of confidential to top-secret documents at Mar-a-Lago in the first place?
That last question is the key one. Until now, we did not know what the FBI found. Of course it assumes one believes the WSJ report on what the FBI found in their search.
Unless Trump went through proper procedures to declassify the data, it should never have been at Mar-a-Lago in the first place.
This is the point all Trump’s defenders will have a hard time explaining. So they won’t. Instead, they will claim political motivation, and guess what. The claim of political motivation is totally believable.
About Declassification
Here’s one final set of questions to ponder.
Thinking Deep
Q: How did the FBI know it would find 20 boxes or at least some restricted boxes at Mar-a-Lago?
A: I have no idea.
Q: Could this whole affair be some sort of scheme by Trump to trigger an FBI raid just so he could claim “witch hunt”.
A: We are getting really deep here, but I fail to see how we can rule out this possibility.
People are going to believe what they want. But the key unanswered questions remains:
What was Trump doing with 20 boxes of confidential to top-secret documents at Mar-a-Lago in the first place? Why did Trump fail to hand over those documents when asked?
Say whatever you want about political motivations, this whole saga stinks to high heavens, with mud pro and con, possibly on purpose by Trump, and for reasons that may forever remain unanswered.
This post originated on MishTalk.Com.
Thanks for Tuning In!
Please Subscribe to MishTalk Email Alerts.
Subscribers get an email alert of each post as they happen. Read the ones you like and you can unsubscribe at any time.
If you have subscribed and do not get email alerts, please check your spam folder.
Mish
tantrums… tantrums as far as the eye can see.
investigators believed the missing documents presented. The concern grew
so acute that Attorney General Merrick Garland approved the
unprecedented search of Trump’s estate last week.”
Trump probably wanted to build a hotel in a country somewhere and in exchange for this they wanted some classified info. Trump is always been about Trump. Law and order be damned. I voted for Trump in 2016 thinking he could be trusted but he can’t be. He’s proven too times that he cannot be trusted with anything.
Every night at midnight GMT, the nuclear launch codes are changed. It’s a combination of software and hardware. The people at the launch sites have 15 seconds to make the change; the timing is controlled by an atomic clock. If someone(s) fail to move quickly enough, their site’s ability to launch is cancelled for 24 hours, and hard questions are asked. The codes are encrypted to a degree that it would take many years for the most powerful computers on earth to break the encryption, but that defeated by the daily change.
Thus, even if Trump took “the nuclear codes,” it wouldn’t have mattered.
After all, I don’t get to take home files once I’ve retired from service, so why should the Presindent?
Saying a person did something against executive policy and breaking the law is very different. Plus intent matters. I do know that Hillary purposefully tried to subvert protocol she was obliged to follow as SoS. What Trump did, which we still don’t know is actually illegal or against policy, also has an unknown intent. Did he pack those boxes and go through them? Were there limited docs that were actually TSCI while the other 99% were ok?
There is a lot of plausible deniability on his part. Was he doing what was similarly done with the keeping of records by other presidents?
I do know that both parties are taking advantage of the talking points it can give them with their base. I also know that this is such an unusual and strange story that I am not sure I am getting real information from anyone. Experts disagree if a process of declassification means the President wouldn’t have had the uniform ability to literally make documents unclassified.
This is where Congress should step in and pass laws regulating how the Executive is to act in these cases of succession and record retention. Nancy, Chuck- you are up. This should be an easy 2-3 page bill unlike the gigantic ones of the Inflation reduction act.
I did not vote for Trump. In my opinion he and Biden were too old, too incompetent and too corrupt. There are serious question though. Does America really need its own version of the Stasi?
Q: Does this look politically motivated?
Q: Could the FBI plant information?
1. Getting the genius New York banks to carry his debts through his many business failures.
2. Vanquishing both the Clinton and Bush crime families in 2016.
By the way, the insiders never forgave him for #2. That’s what this is all about.
And more peaceable inclinations than most.