Some details of the search of Trump’s Florida residence have been released. It appears that FBI agents did find documents marked ‘Top Secret’ after all at Mar-A-Lago.
The most sensitive set of documents removed from Trump’s post-presidency home in Florida were listed generically as “Various Classified/TS/SCI” – the abbreviation for top secret/sensitive compartmented information – the warrant shows.
FBI agents retrieved a total of 11 sets of classified documents, some of which were marked top secret, the Wall Street Journal first reported. Federal agents also took away four sets of top secret documents, three sets of secret documents, and three sets of confidential documents, the receipt showed.
The search warrant receipt did not provide any further detail about the substance of the classified documents. Other materials removed from Mar-a-Lago included binders of photos, information on the “President of France”, and a grant of clemency for the Trump political operative Roger Stone.
Caught at the center of a rapidly escalating controversy, Trump lashed out at the justice department on Friday, saying in a statement that he had declassified all of the records in question. “It was all declassified,” Trump asserted.
Whether the documents were classified or not classified does not necessarily signify the seriousness of the matter. The government is notorious for classifying far too many documents as ‘Top Secret’ even when other observers find the material to be utterly innocuous. But whatever they contain, taking documents marked ‘Top Secret’ is foolish in the extreme, leaving oneself wide open to serious criminal charges.
The more serious information to emerge today is that Trump is being investigated for potential violations of the Espionage Act of 1917. This is an awful and draconian law, introduced during the First World War, that targets what the government considers treasonous acts.
The law prohibits “obtaining information, recording pictures, or copying descriptions of any information relating to the national defense with intent or reason to believe that the information may be used for the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation,” as described by the university. The description of items collected from Trump’s estate as listed in the search warrant includes several instances of “miscellaneous top secret documents.”
It is rarely used by the government and some of its applications have been against whistleblowers and dissidents who have embarrassed the government by revealing its wrongdoing.
Among those charged with offenses under the Act are German-American socialist congressman and newspaper editor Victor L. Berger, labor leader and five-time Socialist Party of America candidate, Eugene V. Debs, anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, former Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society president Joseph Franklin Rutherford, communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, Cablegate whistleblower Chelsea Manning, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Defense Intelligence Agency employee Henry Kyle Frese, and National Security Agency (NSA) contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden.
What is bad about this Act is that it deprives people charged under it some of the basic legal protections, make it easier for them to be found guilty.
Whistleblowers indicted under the Espionage Act face an uphill battle with few prospects of a fair trial. In addition to Kafkaesque levels of secrecy and Byzantine classification structures, Espionage Act cases allow for no affirmative defense that a disclosure was in the public interest. Even more challenging, the government is not required to prove an individual indicted under the Espionage Act acted with the intent to harm US national security or aid a foreign power. As a result, judges have barred whistleblowers from testifying about the reason for their actions and have precluded juries from even hearing the words “over-classification,” “whistleblower,” and “First Amendment.”
Trump keeps railing that he is a victim of the ‘Deep State’ conspiracy against him. If he really thinks that is true, then the worst thing he could possibly have done is to take these documents, giving them this ammunition to use against him.
I do not think Trump is treasonous, in the usual sense of deliberately and materially aiding a foreign power against the interests of his own nation. He is a vain, greedy, narcissistic, lying, grifter but just does not seem like the treasonous type. It is not that I think he has any scruples about it. He has no scruples about anything. I just think that there is nothing in it for him to gain personally, which is always his driving motive.
Which is why I keep repeatedly asking the question: Why would he want any of these documents in the first place? What possible use could they be to him? Even the most ignorant of people would know that doing so is folly. Is he even stupider than I thought?
Follow the money. Trump owes money to a lot of, let’s say unscrupulous, foreign entities.
Even totally disregarding the so-called Steele Dossier, Trump has also made himself very vulnerable to kompromat.
Just to name one (or six) examples, during his casino period an awful lot of Russian names show up in the money-laundering scandal(s).
Interesting that most on that list are on the left side of the political spectrum.
Tfg would steal anything he thought might be valuable to the people who were funding his campaign, or the travel expenses of his lawyer Rudy. ‘Top Secret Nuclear Information’ seems like the exact thing they might take as payments.
I could believe almost anything about this, including his kids/inlaws stealing it to sell to the highest bidder, to thinking he was actually president in exile or some shit, and needed this, to getting it confused with his memoir notes.
Not putting much stake in speculation, but my guess is it was simply to spite the Biden administration -- remember all the dumb, petty bullshit that happened during the change-over? I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he thought that hauling all of these files to his golf course might possibly make things more difficult for the Biden administration, and did it simply for that reason… We know the dude is petty as fuck, I mean, he hired Russian sex workers to piss on a bed, simply because he thought Obama slept in it once…
“It was all declassified,” Trump asserted.
Then why was it still marked “secret” or “top secret/SCI?”
[The Espionage Act] is rarely used by the government and some of its applications have been against whistleblowers and dissidents who have embarrassed the government by revealing its wrongdoing.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t also a valid use for it.
I do not think Trump is treasonous, in the usual sense of deliberately and materially aiding a foreign power against the interests of his own nation. He is a vain, greedy, narcissistic, lying, grifter but just does not seem like the treasonous type.
LOTS of people materially aid foreign powers against the interests of their own nations, for vain, greedy, narcissistic reasons. Sun Tsu acknowledged this in his chapter on the use of spies.
That depends on how stupid you think he is. But the answer is almost assuredly YES.
Mano, I’m surprised you still had any faith in his intellect. I found long ago the futility of that; every time I thought to myself ‘he can’t possibly be stupid enough to do X’, reporting that he truly did X would soon follow. In the previous post on this, you said
Obviously, clever planning is beyond him as he is a dunce. But what if he planned to use these documents in some way that had zero care, discretion, and control? I think we can agree that this is more his style.
Another possibility is that he didn’t necessarily know all details of what he stole, and the more incriminating things were simply accidental inclusions with whatever it is he actually wanted to keep.
The Rosenbergs were executed, and recently there were demands that Manning and Assange should be. Will Trump be the first leader of the executive branch to be executed?
oh? then how do you explain the recent Russian response to the FBI warrants?
I think you quite naive.
I’m hoping this news will stop the whining that “there’s no conceivable way Donald John Trump has ever done anything, in his spotless life of piety n’ service, to merit any law enforcement activity whatsoever, nay, not even one as mild as the execution of a legally-obtained search warrant.” (showercapblog.com; hilarious blog)
The gov’t had been trying to recover the boxes, Trump kept ducking, the mole reported that the contents of those boxes were worse than known, the FBI got a search warrant…and the resulting documents were worse than previous thought, including info on the French President who Putin hates. And other materials “so sensitive they may not be able to be described in forthcoming inventory reports in an unclassified way” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/25/trump-oversight-records/
#9 Lassi
No.
The warrant-to-search was apparently issued after hair furor and his lackeys either ignored or said “nyet!” to multiple previous attempts to return documents: Requests from various lawyers (both National Archive (NA) and DoJ, as I recall), most(? all?) after the notorious 15 boxes were returned to the NA (and discovered to contain some classified material); somewhere along the line a visit by DoJ(?) lawyers who saw something and insisted a lock be put on the relevant door; then a subpoena issued for their return; and then finally the warrant, apparently issued after the DoJ(? FBI?) was tipped off there indeed still were documents in hair furor’s possession (no idea if the informant know of any classified material). And that’s what’s been reported, mostly based on (anonymous) sources, only the warrant and a redacted inventory of what was removed by the FBI have been published (the previous subpoena has not been). I presume this continuing history of refusal is one(?) reason hair furor is possibly facing various obstruction charges.
In answer to the topic head’s question: of course. Boundless stupidity trumps thought.
#10
I’m with you on this one. Saw that remark and I’m like “this blogger is a Trump sympathizer who’s oblivious to Trump’s admiration and idolization of Putin, Kim Jon Un, and other authoritarian leaders and dictators.”
There’s no doubt Trump, that Stupid Idiot, is clearly a traitor. Greatest traitor since Benedict Arnold. Hands down! Anyone who says otherwise is a fool who are only fooling themselves.
I understand that a lot of the secret material was conversations or other interceptions of the communications of foreign goverments or leaders. This is top secret because they don’t wish their methods or the existence of their penetration known.
Trump might keep some conversation by, say, MBS on the topic of Kashoggi as blackmail, to be sure that Saudi money keeps flowing to him. Or other such that he’d perceive as valuable leverage over other people. I wonder if anyone’s told him that, in France, the president’s extramarital affairs are not blackmail material, and, in fact, aren’t even news.
Also, these documents don’t float around the president’s office, so he accidentally took them with him: Trump would have to make an effort to keep them. Anything that he’d perceive as leverage or a source of funds.
Beau of the Fifth Column says that documents marked TS/SCI are a special class of documents that are so sensitive that they can only be viewed in a special room that’s configured for secrecy. So, I suppose that the DOJ’s concern was that it was too threatening to “national security” to have these floating around Trump’s pool house, or used by him for grifting.
This would come down to fine quibbling over the meaning of “deliberately.” I absolutely believe that Trump would do anything he considered to be in his own interest, without regard for whether it was against the interests of his own nation. Consider: his call to Ukraine, which thwarted U.S. foreign policy and aided an enemy of the United States. Consider: his baseless claims of a stolen election are undoubtedly “against the interests of his own nation.”
#12 Holms
Of course. The question was purely rhetorical. It was inspired by Steve Bannon, who claims that the deep state wants Trump dead.
But could it be that Mr. Kennedy has the last laugh?
https://boingboing.net/2022/08/13/ha-ha-ha-sky-banner-flown-over-mar-a-lago-to-mock-trump.html
His defence lawyer will have to use the tactic ” my client is too stupid to be held legally responsible for his actions”.
Is there evidence that Trump has actually ever read a document?
Trump is best president and still president. All classified information is his, to do what he wants with. If he keeps classified document it means Trump unclassified it, duh! Trump is genius at cutting through red tape and liberals hate that. Ridiculous to call Trump treasonous, Trump can’t commit treason on himself! Treason is any attempt to stop Trump from doing what he wants, end of story.
/s …?
Trump’s reasons for taking the classified documents don’t have to have had treasonous intent. If he found something in them later that could be used as a bargaining chip to make Biden look bad, he absolutely would not hesitate to disseminate it, and treason be damned. Just look at his first impeachment.
I said “liberals” but it should have been “enemies”. It’s not just the liberals who are Trumps enemies now.
I have a speculative notion that someone close to Trump told him firmly that it could be very lucrative for him to take certain boxes of documents. I don’t think he thought through how he would make money from them; just hearing “you could get lots of money for what’s in some of this stuff” from the right person would immediately turn him into document hoarding mode.
Consequences? Shmonsequences!
He bragged about his performance on a dementia assessment. He probably can’t operate a light switch let alone change a bulb.
I actually could envision a novel on which a small conspiracy arranges to position some extremely sensitive documents in with the tchotchkes, knowing that a certain kleptocrat will steal the lot. The conspirators then lie low once they see the bait has been taken, then set the hook at a politically convenient time and place. The republicans are confronting (not very well) the realization that if Trump is their candidate he can be blown up at any time. Imagine a Trojan horse full of dynamite instead of Greeks: you are susceptible to random chaos at a time of your opponent’s choosing. Flip the switch, watch the explosion, stand back looking pious and muttering “tut tut” -- what is a non-ableist version of a “manchurian candidate” in which the candidate is an unknowing suicide bomber?
Note that Merrick Garland lined Trump up so he can be charged at any time for a multiple felony, which he has already admitted he did, and created a legal paper-trail that he can’t challenge. His own lawyer signed the itemized receipts. Basically Garland is going to let that collection of facts permeate the zeitgeist, and he can send the FBI to pick him up at any time.
There could be a sealed/classified warrant already sitting in a SCIF at DOJ. “We didn’t charge a sitting president, we charged him last year, we just waited so it wouldn’t influence the election.” BUH-BOOM goes your life.
Garland does not seem to be the vengeful type, which is unfortunate. Revenge is best served with prosciutto and baumes de venise, well chilled.
Beau of the Fifth Column says that documents marked TS/SCI are a special class of documents that are so sensitive that they can only be viewed in a special room that’s configured for secrecy.
Correct. A SCIF. Beau is also correct regarding the process for declassifying TS/SCI documents. Suppose I have a folder that is classified CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN. Before it is declassified, the folder must be reviewed for linked data -- what if the document mentions HAVE BLACKNESS or even PROJECT JENNIFER? Those have to be redacted. More interesting, if I order the declassification of CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN the logs are checked, all copies of the folder are recovered, a redacted version is produced, and the original TS documents go in the burn bag.
If you think about it, that’s a pretty cool system because it implements “need to know”
and tracking and audit. Someone took those documents out of the WH SCIF, and did not return them. The log-book will have that individual’s signature on the correct line, and it won’t be Trump’s. Whoever signed those folders out is in a situation posture “so fucked.”
When I worked at DEC I did some stuff for NSA which involved fixing a non-reentrant ULTRIX device driver for a program called SKYSWEEP. That is what the code said in the comments. I asked my NSA POC about the comment and he freaked the fuck out then hinted that since I was fixing the code maybe I could fix the comment. I did, but first I checked in the revision with the comment.
When I worked at the White House I was creating sensitive but unclassified data -- floppy disks of public email sent to president@whitehouse.gov (which I implemented and managed) since it was presidential records I got the full briefing on record maintenance. It was exhausting. The clintonite political appointees would meet and talk by the water fountain on the advice of WH legal counsel, because “a few words exchanged at the water fountain are not presidential records. So, somewhere in some archives or maybe the library of congress is a box full of floppy discs with my scrawl on the labels, containing 2 years of email that nobody ever read.
Anyhow, the idea that anyone works with presidential records or classified materials without being briefed on the rules, filling out about 40 pages of forms, etc. -- it’s inconceivable. I’m sure high level appointees like Jared and Ivanka probably never filled out the forms, but they would not have escaped learning that presidential records are a thing and TS/SCI folders are not to be left on one’s desk.
Marcus @27 wrote,
I know it’s entirely speculation, but I suggest that it was Trump who removed them from the SCIF, and didn’t sign the logbook. That behavior fits well with the peevish, petulant, petty, pompous, peanut-brained, personality of our previous president.
This also opens the door to the possibility that the reason the DOJ knew to look at Mar-a-Lago was because someone wrote in the SCIF log that folder “PROJECT JENNIFER” (or whatever) was removed by Trump. No snitches required, but it took this long to go through all the presidential archives to be certain that these folders were not buried in the documents they already had.
I’m sure high level appointees like Jared and Ivanka probably never filled out the forms, but they would not have escaped learning that presidential records are a thing and TS/SCI folders are not to be left on one’s desk.
They would not have escaped HEARING that. But they definitely could have escaped LEARNING it.