The damning new DOJ filing implicates
Trump more deeply than ever
By Greg Sargent
Columnist|
August 31, 2022 at 11:51
a.m. EDT
At key moments in the Mar-a-Lago
saga, you could squint at emerging revelations and conclude that Donald Trump
himself might not be directly implicated. Perhaps his aides botched the
transfer of documents to the National Archives. Or perhaps they failed to fully
account for documents when archives officials came knocking, and fumbled things
again when the FBI followed suit.
The key takeaway from the Justice Department’s
latest filing in the case is that this notion is getting impossible to sustain. The
new filing implicates Trump himself in the hoarding of national security
secrets more directly than anything yet.
The filing — which contests the
Trump team’s demand for a special master to review seized documents — provides
a detailed ticktock of efforts to recover documents from him. That began with
archives officials demanding them throughout 2021 and culminated in the
Aug. 8 search of
his Mar-a-Lago compound.
Two big revelations in that ticktock implicate Trump in a fresh way.
The first revelation: We now
have clearer insight into how classified documents were apparently kept at
Mar-a-Lago after Trump’s team turned over a bunch to the
National Archives. And it now appears more likely that Trump was involved in
deceiving law enforcement about it.
After Trump’s team gave
some documents to the archives in January — following efforts throughout 2021 to retrieve
them — the FBI developed evidence that “dozens” of boxes “likely” containing
classified information still remained at Mar-a-Lago, the filing says.
That evidence was borne out.
After the missing documents were subpoenaed, Trump lawyers met with FBI agents
on June 3, and showed them more documents in a Mar-a-Lago storage room. The
filing notes that Trump’s own lawyers treated those documents as classified.
That undercuts Trump’s claim
that he magically declassified them with a wave of his post-presidential wand.
Instead, they apparently remained classified and he kept them
long after the archives began demanding them, and he kept
them after missing documents were supposedly turned over.
What’s more, on that day,
Trump’s lawyers gave agents a sworn statement declaring that a “diligent
search” to locate “any and all” remaining and relevant documents had been
conducted.
Importantly, that statement
also said this characterization was being delivered “on behalf of the Office of
Donald J. Trump.” That appears to suggest the statement — reportedly signed by lawyer Christina
Bobb — was authorized by Trump himself.
This information turned out
to be highly misleading. Which would mean Trump may have authorized his lawyers
to mislead law enforcement.
To see why, let’s look at the
next revelation. It gives us a clearer understanding of how the evidence
suggested Trump was personally engaged in obstruction, and how suspicions of
that drove the decision to search Mar-a-Lago.
After receiving that sworn
statement, says the filing, investigators developed evidence of still more
classified documents remaining at Mar-a-Lago. Importantly, this included
evidence that documents had been moved from the storage room.
Here again, evidence was
borne out: The subsequent search found 33 more boxes or other items, with more
than 100 classified documents, including some highly classified ones. Three
classified documents were in desks in Trump’s office.
It’s hard to imagine that
Trump himself did not know these documents were put in his office, or that
Trump had no involvement in making that happen.
Here’s a really critical
point in the filing: Investigators executed the search because that evidence of
those still-stored documents pointed to obstruction, i.e., obstruction of the
ongoing FBI investigation into the hoarding of documents.
That strongly suggests Trump
held classified documents even after his lawyers swore on his behalf
that a full search had been executed, and also that some
were held in his office as part of that effort to obstruct, says former FBI
counsel Andrew Weissmann.
“Is it really the case that
for 18 months, nobody, including counsel, ever discussed this with the
president or took direction from him?” Weissmann asked rhetorically, noting
that the filing says some of these documents were “interspersed with personal
items.”
Weissmann told me prosecutors
can now ask the court for permission to subpoena Trump’s lawyers, in order to
directly ask whether Trump authorized the original statement misleading
investigators about classified documents still held at Mar-a-Lago.
Indeed, Weissmann said that
Trump’s lawyers are now “potential witnesses.” Weissmann added that the idea
that Trump wasn’t in the loop on all this is “inconceivable.”
Trump’s call for a special
master appears designed as a stalling
tactic, and it may work. Alternatively, Trump may never be criminally charged. But if
the information in the filing is accurate, then Trump is implicated more deeply
in this whole affair than we knew only 24 hours ago. We also have a clearer
picture of law enforcement’s theory that Trump committed obstruction.
Remarkably, the public is
getting all this new information courtesy of tactics Trump himself attempeted.
This filing happened because Trump’s team pursued this “special master"
strategy, prompting this response. And the release of the affidavit for the
search warrant, which also contained very damaging
revelations,
was a response to Trump and his propagandists demanding it.
In a strange twist of poetic
justice, Trump’s own screams of a coverup — which are rooted in his conviction
that he can spin away any set of damaging facts with his magical
reality-bending powers — are resulting in an uncommon level of transparency
that is only further damning him.
Trump aggravates the GOP’s national
security and crime problem
Columnist|
August 31, 2022 at 11:01 a.m. EDT
Donald Trump walked right into it. His brain trust stupidly requested a “special master” to review the documents he took from the White House — totally improper since he does not own the documents and his claim of “executive privilege” is inapposite. (Executive privilege raised against part of the executive branch, the Justice Department, makes no sense.)
Incompetent counsel comes with a price, in this case a damning photo of scattered top-secret documents at Mar-a-Lago, included in a Justice Department filing on Tuesday night ahead of a Thursday hearing on the “special master” request.
The photo starkly countered Trump legal counsel’s earlier claims that all classified materials had been returned, and it showed that highly classified papers had been dumped on a floor outside a storeroom. Other documents were found in desks in Trump’s office, the filing said. It also made clear that until well after the search warrant was executed, Trump had never invoked executive privilege.
As former prosecutor Renato Mariotti tweeted, “The location of the classified documents (in the drawer in Trump’s desk) and the fact that they were mixed in with other documents (presumably Trump’s personal property) is evidence that Trump was responsible for the willful retention of those documents.”
One line in the Justice Department filing looms large: “The government also developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”
The filing reveals the extent of the concealment. When the warrant was executed on Aug. 8, the documents found were “more than twice the amount produced on June 3, 2022” in response to a subpoena. A telling detail might support a charge of obstructing the investigation: Trump’s counsel, while attesting that all classified materials had been returned, prohibited Justice Department representatives from looking in the boxes in June.
As Andrew Weissmann, a former Justice Department attorney, put it: “The Trump filings for a Special Master were a huge misstep. DOJ has used its response to disclose damning proof of a series of crimes, which it would not otherwise have been able to do. And one very compelling photo.”
Republicans are now faced with the prospect of continuing to defend the indefensible or cutting loose the leader of their cult, risking that their voters will stay home in the midterms. This is what comes from defending someone contemptuous of America’s national security interests and willing to betray our democracy to retain power.
Moreover, Democrats have figured out how to attack Republicans who fancy themselves as defense hawks but rationalize such blatant disregard for our national security and engage in hysterical, dangerous and utterly unwarranted attacks on government officials protecting our national security secrets.
President Biden, in a speech in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on Tuesday, delivered a stemwinder on crime. He declared: “Let me say this to my MAGA Republican friends in Congress. Don’t tell me you support law enforcement if you won’t condemn what happened on the sixth” — Jan. 6, 2021. “For God’s sake, whose side are you on?” He went on: “You can’t be pro-law-enforcement and pro-insurrection. You can’t be the party of law and order and call the people who attacked the Capitol on January 6th ‘patriots.’ ”
Referring to the execrable Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), Biden thundered: “The idea that you turn on a television and see senior senators and congressmen saying, ‘If such and such happens, there will be blood in the street.’ Where the hell are we?”
He reiterated: “It’s sickening to see the new attacks on the FBI, threatening the life of law enforcement agents and their families for simply carrying out the law and doing their job ... There is no place in this country, no place, for endangering the lives of law enforcement. No place. None. Never. Period.”
He might have added, you cannot be pro-democracy or tough on crime if you make baseless excuses for a former president who allegedly violated the Espionage Act (among other statutes cited in the Justice Department affidavit), concoct meritless conspiracy theories that evidence was planted or dismiss ample evidence of obstruction. You cannot be on America’s side and defend Trump. Period.
For far too long, members of the lawless party have conned voters
into believing the party is a valiant defender of national security and tough
on crime. In truth, they defend the lifting of our nation’s most closely
guarded secrets, refuse to condemn efforts to hinder the investigation and
target law enforcement. By doing so, they join Trump in subverting our national
security.