Why did Trump keep state secrets? He certainly did not want to tie up campaign cash in fundraising for a presidential library, or indicate where it would be located, so his presidential memorabilia couldn’t be a reason to hold on to those items.
More useful would be the fungible qualities in using them as financial kompromat or in other forms of “pressure” especially in 2024. So many lies and illicit souvenirs, with so many excuses tossed out there in the hope that one might stick. It’s enough to make you throw a shoe.
“It was an unprecedented action that needs to be supported by unprecedented justification,” Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, Republican of Pennsylvania and a former F.B.I. agent, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” But he added, “I have urged all my colleagues to make sure they understand the weight of their words.”
The calls for a more cautious tone came as threats emerged against law enforcement. A gunman on Thursday attacked an F.B.I. office in Cincinnati, and on Friday, the Department of Homeland Security distributed an intelligence bulletin to law enforcement around the country that warned of “an increase in threats and acts of violence, including armed encounters, against law enforcement, judiciary and government personnel” after the search.
“The F.B.I. and D.H.S. have observed an increase in violent threats posted on social media against federal officials and facilities, including a threat to place a so-called dirty bomb in front of F.B.I. headquarters and issuing general calls for ‘civil war’ and ‘armed rebellion,’” said the bulletin, which was obtained by The New York Times.
Adding to the sense of alarm, another gunman crashed a car into a barricade outside the Capitol around 4 a.m. on Sunday. After he exited the car and it became engulfed in flames, he shot into the air several times before killing himself, the Capitol Police said.
Mr. Fitzpatrick said he had begun checking in with his former colleagues at the F.B.I. “to make sure they were OK.”
[...]
The former president has worked to cash in on the search.
Mr. Trump’s political action committee has been furiously fund-raising off the F.B.I. search, sending out at least 17 text messages to donors since Tuesday. “The Dems broke into the home of Pres. Trump,” one read. “This is POLITICAL TARGETING!” another alleged. “THEY’RE COMING AFTER YOU!” a third said.
[...]
Representatives Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York and the chairwoman of the Oversight Committee, have called for the director of national intelligence to conduct an “immediate review and damage assessment” and provide a classified briefing to Congress about the potential harm done to national security by Mr. Trump’s handling of documents.
“The fact that they were in an unsecure place that is guarded with nothing more than a padlock or whatever security they had at a hotel is deeply alarming,” Mr. Schiff said on “Face the Nation.”
www.nytimes.com/...
There were also times when Trump publicly indicated that material would be declassified … only to have his lawyers and staff walk the claim back. Journalist Jason Leopold noted how White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in 2020 responded to a request for material “declassified” by Trump in a tweet: Trump didn’t really mean to declassify all of it.
Then there was a 2018 lawsuit from the New York Times arguing that Trump had inadvertently declassified the existence of a program by mentioning it; Trump’s lawyers disagreed.
“To prevail in any claim of declassification,” the attorneys wrote in a filing, the Times had to show “first, that President Trump’s statements are sufficiently specific; and second, that such statements subsequently triggered actual declassification.” Otherwise, the documents weren’t declassified. After all, they continued: “Declassification, even by the President, must follow established procedures.”
Which a blanket “if I take this upstairs, it’s declassified” order likely wouldn’t meet.
[...]
This is Schrödinger’s declassification. Everything is both classified and declassified until Trump is asked about it, at which it settles into whichever position is most useful for Trump. A government program he shouldn’t have talked about? Still classified. A document sitting in a box at Mar-a-Lago? Declassified. It’s government security through vibes.
But then we come to our original second point: In broad strokes, this doesn’t matter.
The Times’s Charlie Savage (who pointed out that Times lawsuit) made this point in a useful piece over the weekend. If you look at the three statutes the Justice Department believes Trump might have violated — 18 U.S. Code Sections 793, 1519 and 2071 — you’ll see no mention that the documents being retained in potential violation of the law need to have been classified documents.
www.washingtonpost.com/...
The big picture: The FBI searched Trump's Mar-a-Lago home on Monday, recovering 11 sets of classified documents.
- Fox News reported on Saturday that the FBI seized boxes covered by attorney-client privilege and possibly executive privilege, according to unnamed sources familiar with the investigation.
What he's saying: "It has just been learned that the FBI, in its now famous raid of Mar-a-Lago, took boxes of privileged ‘attorney-client’ material, and also ‘executive’ privileged material, which they knowingly should not have taken," Trump said on Truth Social.
- "By copy of this TRUTH, I respectfully request that these documents be immediately returned to the location from which they were taken," he said.
Of note: House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told CBS' Face the Nation he'd seen no evidence to support Trump's claim that the documents were declassified.
- "A former president has no declassification authority," Schiff said.
- "And the idea that 18 months after the fact Donald Trump could simply announce, 'Well, I'm retroactively declassifying, or whatever I took home had the effect of declassifying them' is absurd."
Background: Trump and his associates have frequently sought to claim executive privilege to prevent the release of documents or information.
www.axios.com/...
Utah Sen. Mike Lee: tough to get a read on him. He’s kind of shy in person. He doesn’t enjoy chatting with Capitol reporters, but when you get him going about the Constitution in a committee hearing, he can’t stop himself. He’s the guy you didn’t want to be in a political science seminar with, even if he’s friendly. But also, he just started a really weird new Twitter account? “@BasedMikeLee,” which was confirmed this week to be Lee’s personal account, is an odd mix of typical political talking points and slang that sounds awfully weird coming from a conservative white Mormon from Utah. “This account is no cap—bussin, forreal forreal,” Lee tweeted on July 24. Two minutes later: “The haters can’t handle this frickin’ smoke.” He keeps doing this because, we guess, he thinks it’s funny that no one knows what he’s babbling about? That’s the Surge’s schtick, Mike. Stay in your lane.
slate.com/...