Last week was Donald Trump’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. On Monday, August 8, the FBI paid a visit to his Palm Beech residence, served a search warrant, and left with about 20 cartons of documents. According to the inventory unsealed on Friday, August 12, aside from little nuggets like a file containing information about the “President of France,” there were 11 sets of documents identified in a range from “Confidential” to “TS/SCI” (Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information). Due to the sensitive information contained therein, this last classification is the most restrictive. We’ll come back to this below.
If you read my previous post you know what Trump said on the night of August 8. If you haven’t, then suffice it to say that he didn’t take it well. He posted his response on his platform “Truth Social.” Who says Trump doesn’t have a sense of humor, a sense of whimsy, a sense of irony?
During the week, he offered a variety of excuses ranging from his on-going cooperation with the authorities for return of the documents, that the documents were “planted,” that reports that some of the documents containing nuclear information was a “hoax,” to finally his statement that he had a “standing order” that any classified doc he took out of the office were de facto “declassified.” We’ll come back to this one, too.
On Wednesday, August 10, Trump was required to be deposed by New York State Attorney General, Leticia James, in her investigation into whether the Trump Organization violated the civil statutes of New York State. Don Junior and Ivanka had already given their depositions, but Daddy Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment a reported 440+ times. Yet his son Eric invoked the Fifth Amendment over 500 times! I guess youth is served after all.
It’s important to note that this was an investigation into civil violations, not criminal violations. Invoking the Fifth in a criminal matter would not permit any inference one way or the other. But in a civil matter, a fact finder can make inferences from the deponent’s reliance on the Fifth.
I’ll go out on a limb here and assert that any inferences drawn by Attorney General James will not inure to Trump’s benefit. But that’s just a guess.
Over the course of the week, many of Trump’s MAGA zombie followers created a cacophony to the effect that Attorney General Merrick Garland needed to release copies of the search warrant. The MAGA zombie army ignored the fact that Trump had a copy of the warrant and related inventory of seized materials and that he could release his copy of the warrant at any time. Clearly, Trump knew that such release wasn’t in his interests. As in all matters, Trump wants to own the issue, not the facts.
On Thursday, August 11, the Department of Justice filed pleadings asking that Florida’s southern federal district court unseal the warrant. As no objection was raised by anyone by the court’s 3:00 p.m. Friday deadline, the warrant was made public for all to read.
For those who thought they were getting the Rosetta Stone to understand why the warrant had to be sought, issued and served, they were sorely disappointed. We were able to read the warrant (with addenda) and the inventory of items taken that listed the aforementioned TS/SCI designation.
A telling bit of information that has largely gone unmentioned, especially by the Trump MAGA zombies, was the warrant’s description identifying as targets of the search, “All physical documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 793, 2071 , or 1519.”
Don’s really horrible week was getting worse by the day. To be clear,
18 U.S.C. §§ 793: Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information, which carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.
18 U.S.C. §§ 2071: Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally, which carries a penalty of up to three years in prison and disqualification from holding office (more on this below).
18 U.S.C. §§ 1519: Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy, which carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.
Federal statute 18 U.S.C §§ 793 is the Espionage Act; 18 U.S.C. §§ is an spoliation/obstruction of Justice statute; 18 U.S.C. §§ 2071 is the Presidential Records Act. No wonder Trump wasn’t eager to publish the warrant.
Or as they might say on the street, shit just got real.
However, not to be totally deterred by this revelation (although the brief quiet was delightful), the Trump MAGA zombies, inside and outside the governmen, began fixating on the assertion that Trump had previously declassified these documents. Not just specific documents but pretty much any document he took out of the office.
In essence, Trump and the MAGA zombies want us to believe that like many of us, he took work from the office to work on at home, or in Trump’s case the residence at the White House. Let’s unpack this for a second. First, because he was addicted to the morning cable shows and didn’t often arrive in the office by 11:00 a.m., the staff disguised his tardiness by inserting “Executive Time” into his daily schedule.
But if he worked at night from the residence, when did he do it? During commercial breaks on Carlson’s, Hannity’s, and Ingram‘s shows? And let’s not forget the attention that he gave to programs on Newsmax and One America News. And how could he fit in work around his news programs and incessant tweeting?
And if the documents were “declassified” when he took them out of the office, were they “reclassified” when he returned them? Of course this all assumes he returned them at all, a huge assumption indeed!
Given what we know, mostly from what we witnessed over the course of his presidency, any claim to standing order declassification, no doubt triggered the nanosecond he laid his hands upon the documents, is absurd. To buy this swill, you have to believe that he asserted powers as a lay person not previously seen since the establishment of the Catholic church: instead of bread and wine being transubstantiated into the body and blood of The Christ, Trump transubstantiated classified documents into declassified documents.
Maybe he was listening to Tom Leher’s “Vatican Rag”: two, four, six, eight, time to transubstantiate!
There are those in the Christian Right who view Trump as the modern embodiment of Jesus, but this is ridiculous. If they buy into this secular transubstantiation, they would have to accept the Miracle of Mar A Lago, which is even more ridiculous. There will be no raising of Lazarus by the pool.
Please, this is no Our Lady of Lourdes moment. Rather, these explanations are the ramblings of a desperate man trying to get out from under the possibility of being charged and prosecuted for the commission of, maybe, three serious felonies. Not to mention being barred from ever holding any office of public trust. No second term for you, Mr. Trump.
The problem he has is that even if we accept as true his declassification process, and ignore that nobody aside from MAGA zombies like Kash Patel and John Solomon actually knew about this procedure, it has no benefit to Trump’s possible legal exposure. None of the listed statutes require that any documents be classified.
OOPS!
Missing from the unsealed materials was the affidavit submitted in support of the application for the warrant. This is truly the Rosetta Stone Trump and the MAGA zombies seek. This would reveal names and statements provided by sources giving support to the need for the government to get the docs. Specifically, it may provide clues to the identity of the Rat in the Trump universe.
Remember, “snitches get stitches.”
This week, commencing on August 15, is not shaping up to be better than last week. On Monday, Trump attorney and inveterate Yankees fan (reason enough to suspect derangement) Rudy Giuliani was notified by the Fulton County (Georgia) District Attorney that he is a “target” of her investigation into attempted 2020 election violations. “Target” is often followed by an indictment. Giuliani was already scheduled on Wednesday to appear before a Georgia grand jury. We’ll find out how many times Giuliani will cite attorney/client privilege or plead the Fifth.
Has anyone set the over/under on this yet?
Also on Monday, Trump MAGA zombie, Chameleon, toady, and stooge, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina lost his court action brought - based on immunity under the Constitution’s speech and debate clause - to excuse him from testifying before the Fulton County grand jury. He plans to appeal. We’ll see how that goes.
Two more bits of bad news for Trump. On Thursday, August 18, Allen Weisselberg, Trump Organization CFO, will plead guilty to criminal violations of the New York State tax code. Reportedly the deal calls for Weisselberg to serve five months in jail in exchange for his assistance in the criminal matter involving the Trump Organization itself. Reportedly, he will not assist the prosecutors in any investigation of Trump.
On the same day, in the Florida district court a hearing will be conducted on several media outlets’ motion to unseal the affidavit submitted in support of the search warrant. Trump is sitting on the sidelines, hoping that the “fake news” prevails on their motion. The government opposes unsealing because to do so would compromise on going investigations into sensitive national security issues. My money is on the government.
Finally, on Tuesday evening, incumbent Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney lost her primary against someone named Harriet Hageman, a former Trump opponent turned election denying supporter. What was Cheney’s sin? She put country over party. She asserted that facts and truth were more important than her political fortunes.
I cannot think of more than two issues on which I’d agree with Cheney. Put more starkly, she’s the antithesis of most that I hold dear. But she was honest and consistent. She was principled and two of her principles are the preservation of our democracy and the unbiased application of the rule of law. Those are the two issues on which we do agree, and those are the two issues that led to her demise at the hands of the MAGA zombies.
To make matters worse, as of this writing Sarah Palin is still politically alive in her race to represent Alaska in Congress. Alaska has initiated a rank order ballot procedure so the final results will not be known for at least a week. Hope springs eternal that Palin wasn’t Nick Begich’s voters’ second choice.
And it’s only Wednesday morning! Who knows what other issues will arise over the next few days. But as the legal walls incrementally close in on Trump, we’ll see if he has one more Mara A Lago Miracle that will transubstantiate his butt out of trouble.
And so it goes…
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