Of all the locations in which missing classified government materials were discovered in Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home-slash-resort, among the most incriminating was "sitting beside Donald Trump's own bed." Any remaining claims that Donald, who attempted a coup against our government, was somehow unaware that stacks of classified government documents had been delivered from the White House to his for-profit club were surely dashed when an empty government folder marked "classified" was discovered on Trump's bedside table.
Surely, Trump has been framed! It must have been antifa that put the stolen folder next to his bed. One of Trump's housekeepers must have done it as a prank. It must have blown from Washington, D.C., to his bedside table on a stiff wind.
Nope. It turns out, says one of Donald Trump's now-interchangeable lawyers, that Donald put the folder there himself. It's a "humorous" story, sez the lawyer. The light from "one of those landline telephones" is too bright, and it "keeps him up at night," so Donald Trump, who is not president and has not been president for over two years now, grabbed an empty manila folder marked "classified evening summary" and put it over the phone so the light wouldn't bother him.
And who among us has never decided to cover up our too-bright nightstand electronics by hunting down an empty government folder marked "classified evening summary" to act as an ersatz shield? It happens all the time. It was a choice between that folder and, quite literally, absolutely anything else, and Donald made his choice.
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After going on television to freely admit that Donald was indeed personally wandering around Mar-a-Lago with the government documents he told investigators he didn't have, and making sure to let America know that this was humorous, and not at all incriminating, Donald's lawyer also tried to make clear that the folder marked "classified evening summary" was, somehow, not actually classified. It was "not a classification marking," said Timothy Parlatore.
We're not going to engage much with that, because it's either another in the very long string of lies Trump's lawyers have told or, generously, a bit of lawyer-weaseling meant to dodge the question of what the folder actually was and how it got there.
For example, perhaps the "classified evening summary" folder at one point contained multiple classified documents inside it, but the enclosing folder was not separately tracked as classified itself. That seems probable! It's also completely irrelevant, because (ahem) we know there was some series of events that led to a presumably White House-controlled "classified evening summary" folder getting transported to Mar-a-Lago, emptied of its contents, and finding a new life as Donald Trump's bedside detritus even as Trump himself was insisting he didn't know nothin' about no government papers.
The folder presumably once had something in it. Where is that something now? Who has it? Who removed it? What chain of events led drowsy Donald Trump, annoyed at a too-bright light on a phone that he possesses despite having enough money to purchase phones with fewer or no lights if he wanted to, reaching for something to block the light with and laying hands on an empty government "classified evening summary" folder as the most likely choice?
Donald Trump is allegedly very rich! If none of the usual solutions can be made to work, whether it be electrical tape, some other not-transparent tape, a small scrap of paper, a book, an endangered animal's severed ear, or literally any paper on Earth that does not have the word "classified" on it, Donald Trump could hire some tuxedoed grump to stand next to his bed while holding an umbrella between Donald and the light. He could hire Eric to do it—it's about time that slug learned the value of labor.
Whatever happened, we know that Donald Trump had his mitts on another folder meant to contain "classified" government information, we know he was doing something with it that led to that folder ending up in his bedroom, on his bed, or on a table, or in a drawer, and that, however it came to Mar-a-Lago, it's apparently empty now.
What a funny story! This lawyer is right, this whole episode is hilarious!
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