As you’ve probably heard by now, Donald Trump has a problem with paper. Specifically at issue is the fact that he spent his four years in office (1) regularly shredding presidential documents (2) possibly flushing some down the toilet, and (3) absconding to Mar-a-Lago with more than a dozen boxes containing presidential records that were not his to take. And as it turns out, he wasn’t just hanging on to knickknacks and personal mementos!
The Washington Post reports that “some of the White House documents that Donald Trump improperly took to his Mar-a-Lago residence were clearly marked as classified,” including ones that had the words “top secret” on them. That the materials the ex-president helped himself to weren’t simply stacks of White House stationery or crude drawings he did with his giant black Sharpie while ignoring coronavirus briefings was discovered by the National Archives and Records Administration, which was forced to make a trip to Palm Beach last month to pick up the records that should have been turned over to it in the first place. Earlier this month the Archives asked the Justice Department to investigate Trump’s decision to take the records with him.
Right now you might be asking yourself, Are documents marked “top secret” actually that big a deal? And in fact, the answer is yes, they are! As the Post notes, the top secret designation is given to information where unsanctioned disclosure “could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security.” And while any president would probably find themselves in hot water over just unilaterally deciding to take these kinds of documents—which, incidentally, are government property—to their house, Trump happens to be the only one who incited a violent insurrection currently being investigated by Congress.
Is Trump actually going to be held accountable for any of this? Unclear. Worrisomely, it’s looking like, as has been the case for most of his life, he might get away with everything, despite the fact that experts say there is no question that, at best, something exceedingly shady went down.
Even with documents marked classified found where they don’t belong, prosecutors have a high legal bar to get to criminal charges. Prosecutors would have to prove someone intentionally mishandled the material or was grossly negligent in doing so—which can be a steep hurdle in its own right. And Trump, as president, would have had unfettered latitude to declassify material, potentially raising even bigger challenges to bringing a case against him. Former federal prosecutor Brandon Van Grack said that some of the laws about classified information require someone to act “without authorization, and potentially the president would be able to argue he gave himself that authorization.” But—regardless of whether a criminal case could be substantiated—Van Grack said that “the FBI would want and need to review the information and conduct an investigation to determine what occurred and whether any sources and methods were compromised.”
David Laufman, a former Justice Department counterintelligence official who was involved in prosecutions and investigations over the mishandling of classified information, said Trump being a former president “presents additional litigation risk factors, insofar as he, as president, would have had the authority to declassify documents or potentially even determine where classified documents could be transferred.” But, he added, “there’s no question that it was improper for classified information to be taken to or to reside at Mar-a-Lago.”
In a statement, Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich told the Post, as he is contractually obligated to, that all of this is just another example of the media trying to take down a great man. “It is clear that a normal and routine process is being weaponized by anonymous, politically motivated government sources to peddle Fake News,” he said. “The only entity with the ability to credibly dispute this false reporting, the National Archives, is providing no comment.”
8to24 on February 11st, 2022 at 23:28 UTC »
This is an excellent example of how much better the Right is at outrage. Hillary Clinton via an IT who work for the state department and with the state departments knowledge set up a server so she could securely use a mobile device to read emails. Republicans had a meltdown for years over it. Created an atmosphere where in the eyes of millions Clinton was totally unelectable over it.
Meanwhile Trump has his Daughter stand in for him at state dinners, flush documents down the toilet, remove documents from the White House documents from the White House putting them in his home, held meetings with adversaries were no cabinet members were present, etc, etc, etc. Yet The left can't get even 5% of the mileage out of it that Republicans got out of "HER EMAILS"!!!!
MainPhysics4759 on February 11st, 2022 at 23:02 UTC »
Of course they were important, they were TOP SECRET…
PartialToDairyThings on February 11st, 2022 at 22:51 UTC »
This is literally the quality of their political discourse. Whataboutism that would make an 8 year old blush.