And I Bet He Didn't Pay Taxes On The Loot
Based on Shelby Talcott’s reporting for Semafor, it sounds to me like Señor Trumpanzee is trying to walk back the Bedminster smoking gun tape everyone is talking about. His MAGAt fans don’t care that the tape proves his guilt, but… normal people do. Yesterday, he insisted that he wasn’t showing off classified documents, documents he clearly said were “highly confidential” material and “secret information” that he could no longer declassify. ‘I would say it was bravado, if you want to know the truth, it was bravado,’ Trump said in an interview aboard his plane with Semafor and ABC News. ‘I was talking and just holding up papers and talking about them, but I had no documents. I didn’t have any documents.’”
I guess his lawyers have been busy coming up with a new strategy— “That he was overselling the material he was showing to an aide and people working on a biography of former chief of staff Mark Meadows in the recording… ‘I just held up a whole pile of— my desk is loaded up with papers. I have papers from 25 different things,’ he said, adding he kept relevant news articles about topics like Iran on hand… Asked about his use of the word ‘plans’ during a Fox News interview earlier Tuesday to describe some items he may have highlighted in the 2021 meeting, Trump insisted he was referring to ‘building plans’ and plans for golf courses strewn about his desk. ‘Did I use the word plans?’ he said. ‘What I’m referring to is magazines, newspapers, plans of buildings. I had plans of buildings. You know, building plans? I had plans of a golf course… I didn't have a classified document. There was no classified document on my desk.’… National security attorney Bradley Moss told Semafor that a ‘bravado’ defense, in which Trump claimed he was exaggerating the importance of papers that were not actually classified, could be a difficult sell in court. ‘One, they’re not charging him with retaining that document,’ he said in a text message. ‘Two, the relevance of the comments in the audio are they speak to Trump’s intent and awareness of the limitations on his ability to have and share classified records. And three, I have no reason to believe Smith would have included this issue without getting clarifying testimony from the various witnesses.’”
Yesterday, The Atlantic published a interesting, but half-baked theory from David Graham about the documents case, namely that Trump kept the documents to use them to get even with government employees he didn’t like— in this case General Mark Miley, Graham called it “the theory that explains everything about the Trump documents case— and so much else about Donald Trump’s unusual presidency. Meh.
The stolen documents are a hodgepodge of secrets and although some could be used to screw with people he hated, there’s no doubt in my mind that Trump stole them and held onto them to sell them, the way he probably did in the case of the $2 billion Jared Golden got from the Saudis.
Graham reminded his readers that the transcript of the recording that CNN just released was already available from the DOJ, with just a few minor deletions. “Yet hearing Trump say it in his own voice,” wrote Graham, “is a more real and visceral experience, undermining the former president’s defense and perhaps illuminating his motivations. Remember, the person who taught Trump to be a successful criminal was Mob lawyer Roy Cohn.
Other than the redaction of “Iran” the two things omitted from the conversation in the indictment are echt Trump. In one aside, he jokes that Hillary Clinton would have sent such classified material to Anthony Weiner, “the pervert.” The irony of Trump mocking Clinton’s mishandling of classified material while mishandling classified material was apparently not lost on Special Counsel Jack Smith, who included several Trump remarks criticizing Clinton during the 2016 campaign in the indictment.
…Trump hasn’t tried to deny he had the conversation transcribed in the indictment, so the tape doesn’t knock out any of his defenses. He has claimed that the rustling documents audible in this tape were just newspaper clippings, which doesn’t make any sense with what he says, though the recording itself doesn’t provide evidence in either direction. Last night on his social-media site, Trump inexplicably and without elaboration called the recording “an exoneration.”
More broadly, Trump’s defense strategy, such as it is, hasn’t really been to deny that he had classified documents. [NOTE: He did, very explicitly-- if not persuasively-- soon after The Atlantic published Graham's column.] Instead, he’s pursued a (flimsy) political argument that he is being unfairly targeted. Yet an enigma remains: Why was Trump so insistent on holding on to the sensitive documents? He’s never been all that interested in policy questions. He doesn’t seem to want them for a presidential memoir. But even after the federal government threatened him with prosecution, he continued to seek ways to hide documents, leading to 37 felony charges.
…[Trump] has conflated his own interests and the government’s— whether that is demanding personal loyalty from civil servants, or using the government to direct money and business to his private ventures. On the other, he never seemed to grasp the importance of his position. As president, he shot from the hip, not recognizing that while an outlandish statement he made as a TV star might land him on the front page of the New York Post, an outlandish statement he made as president could rupture alliances or foment violence.
In the case of the classified documents, both forms are at play. Trump refuses to recognize that records from his administration could possibly belong to the federal government rather than him. And he hoarded the documents for use in settling personal scores against government employees.
At the time of the recording in this case, a New Yorker article had reported that Milley worried Trump would attack Iran in the last days of his administration. Trump brandished what he said was a plan to attack Iran in order to claim that Milley, and not he, was the real warmonger. What was interesting about the document to Trump was not that it was classified and thus illicit (though he knew that, as he demonstrated), nor that it was substantively interesting. The only reason Trump cared was that he could maybe use it for settling scores.
Once you start looking for the political-as-personal dynamic, you can find it everywhere in the story. It explains why Trump mixed ephemera like newspaper clippings and golf clothing in with some of the most sensitive government documents. It perhaps explains why he thought nothing of storing his stuff in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom. And it explains why he was so peevish about anybody looking in his boxes. “I don’t want anybody looking, I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t, I don’t want you looking through my boxes,” Trump told one of his lawyers, according to notes the lawyer kept.
That’s relatable. Who wants somebody rifling through the personal materials related to the grudges he keeps? Taking what Trump says at face value is usually unwise. But in this case, he may have really meant exactly what he said. The only problem is, those materials weren’t his to begin with.
If, as seems apparent, your pussy doj is taking a dive on this whole political charade, we'll never find out who got copies or even looked at them.
it's probably the most important question, since american assets will have been rolled up and killed and national security will have been damaged. certainly if your doj accidentally proves treason here, it would make it even harder to take a dive.
you see, they only want to diminish trump, not put him away. your democrap party NEEDS to run against trump or they lose more seats.
but nobody who votes will care because even non-nazi voters are dumber than shit.
and what about Jared ? are we going to pretend that the 2 BILLION was an investment and NOT a PAY-OFF ? (are pay-offs subject to taxes?)