As Donald Trump slithers towards a new presidential campaign, The Washington Post piped up yesterday with one of those stories that really didn't have to be a story, if we're going to be honest about these things. "Investigators see ego, not money, as Trump’s motive on classified papers" says the Post headline, referring to the whole nasty business of Donald Trump carting off boxes of classified government national security documents, lying to the government about having them, and then getting pissy when the government came to take the documents back.
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Citing nebulous "people familiar with the matter," which sounds suspiciously like "one or more of Donald Trump's lawyers told us this," the Post asserts that prosecutors think Donald Trump only stole classified national security secrets because, uh, he just felt like it.
Or, as the Post puts it, a government review of those documents "has not found any apparent business advantage to the types of classified information in Trump’s possession, these people said. FBI interviews with witnesses so far, they said, also do not point to any nefarious effort by Trump to leverage, sell or use the government secrets. Instead, the former president seemed motivated by a more basic desire not to give up what he believed was his property, these people said."
That's a lot of these people said for a story that, at the heart of it, doesn't actually matter when it comes to a determination of whether Trump broke multiple laws when hoarding classified documents in unsecured locations in his for-profit golf resort. There's no "but he just felt like doing that" exemption to government records law.
You don't see "Investigators believe ego, not money, was motive behind church arson." There are—at least, to my knowledge—no headlines blaring: "Serial mass murderer cites inquisitive nature, not hunger, for eating five victims."
Nobody's allowed to make off with government property, whether it be Smithsonian artwork or an Army surface-to-air missile, by declaring that they were only in it for the "lol"s. It Don't Work That Way, and the Post quickly clarifies that point only after sharing with us several paragraphs that ignore it.
There's also an inherent flaw with the argument that because there was no apparent pattern to the sort of documents Trump made off with. For four years, reporters have been sharing with us the news that Donald Trump didn't understand much of anything that came across his White House desk, nor were his aides able to get him to pay attention to any of it unless they figured out a way to weave Donald Trump's name or picture into the documents they needed him to read.
That there is no discernible logic to the stuff Donald Trump stuffed down his pants before leaving the White House is not evidence that Donald Trump did or did not have a particular intent in collecting it. Trump would have no idea what classified information had monetary value and what didn't. He wouldn't have a clue as to what national security secret would provide him a "business advantage" in his day job as golf club owner and real estate huckster.
Just because there was no rhyme or reason to the documents Trump wanted to keep doesn't mean he didn't have a plan for them. It just means his motives may be ridiculous enough to be indecipherable to anyone not familiar with the peculiarities of his often-incoherent mind.
There are a great many ways Donald Trump could look to leverage stolen national security documents. He could have taken them purely to show off to future sycophantic visitors. He could have taken them to hand out as door prizes when courting foreign investors—not because he thought they had value, but as confidence-man hint that maybe he could get them something of value, if they were to purchase five condos in New West Trumpistan. Everything Donald Trump has done to make money in after winning public office has been cheap. A new proposed hotel chain themed around 'Merica stuff. Family suggestions to Chinese investors that the new Trump regime could grease the gears of the U.S. immigration machine, for a price. Making it widely known that supplicants who hold events at the Trump-owned property near the White House would get more of Trump's attention than supplicants who did not.
The man's greed is only matched by his utter inability to come up with any money-making venture that isn't a petty scam. He could well have taken boxes and boxes of government documents solely because Ivanka's kids wanted scratch paper for coloring on and Donald wasn't about to spring for a box of the fresh stuff. Here, kids, have our latest intelligence report on Israel's nuclear capabilities. Draw a pony on it or whatever, I'm late to the first tee.
When reading any story that relies on anonymous sources, it is imperative to examine just why those anonymous sources are piping up with this news. Who does it benefit? What is the characterization of the sources, and what doesn't that characterization reveal? In the end, the takeaway "news" of this story is that, according to Somebody, federal investigators still don't have any evidence that Donald Trump successfully traded away any of the classified documents he collected for personal or professional favors.
The "news" is that it's still an absolute certainty that Donald Trump stole classified national security documents, some of them in the top ranks of classification, and that he possessed them illegally, lied about it, and violated laws yet again by stacking them in insecure locations in a building known to attract foreign intelligence agents.
But there's no evidence he committed actual espionage! Everybody make sure you report that, on the day before Donald's Big Important History-Shaking Announcement! No provable espionage!
Good to know. Not new news, though—although the timing of the alleged leak downplaying the severity of one of the seditionist coup-attempting politician's most recent federal crimes, on the eve of his desired rebranding, might be.
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