Boxes of doxes
Trump is using it to demand more money. Of course he is.
Donald Trump on Tuesday tried to turn the news of an FBI search of his Florida estate to his benefit, citing the investigation in text messages and emails soliciting political donations from his supporters.
“I’m a criminal, send $$$.”
“As they watch my endorsed candidates win big victories and see my dominance in all polls, they are trying to stop the Republican Party and me once more,” Trump said in a fundraising email on Tuesday. “The lawlessness, political persecution, and Witch Hunt, must be exposed and stopped.”
Therefore, send $$$$$$$.
Eric Trump, one of Trump’s adult children, told Fox News on Monday the search concerned boxes of documents that his father brought from the White House.
So in other words semi-adult Eric told Fox News that Trump violated the Presidential Records Act? Smart move.
A federal law called the U.S. Presidential Records Act requires the preservation of memos, letters, notes, emails, faxes and other written communications related to a president’s official duties.
So any “boxes of documents” Trump “brought from the White House” would be documents he had no right to remove from the White House.
Look, if the FBI can search a former president’s property by presenting probable cause to a obtain a warrant from a magistrate judge, then IMAGINE WHAT THEY COULD DO TO YOU!!!!111
The Reuters article is misleading on one point. The FBI raid yesterday was not about violating the Presidential Records Act (which is toothless). The raid was about mishandling classified documents (whether they were Presidential records or not).
The hilarity remains of Eric Trump on Fox News naming his father responsible for the earlier 15 boxes of documents that included documents clearly marked as classified top secret.
Yesterday CNN posted an excellent timeline that helps see the escalation from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI. I’ll paraphrase the escalation:
• January 2022 — The NARA retrieved 15 boxes of records from Mar‑a‑Lago. The NARA are like librarians, and the records were like overdue library books.
• February 2022 — The NARA told the DOJ that some of the records were classified documents. I’ll add that The Washington Post ran an excellent article saying that some of the documents were clearly marked Top Secret (TS), and I’ll add that TS information by definition could do “grave damage” to the United States.
This step escalated from the NARA interest (in the Presidential Records Act) to the DOJ/FBI interest (in mishandling TS documents).
• April-June 2022 — CNN lists more steps.
• August 8, 2022 — The FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, “a major escalation of the classified documents investigation. The search focused on the area of the club where Trump’s offices and personal quarters are located. Federal agents remove boxes of material from the property.”
As I see it, the FBI has these priorities: (1) Get TS documents back into custody, (2) Give some people a “defensive briefing” (to sign an agreement that a person has a lifetime commitment to protect any information they saw), and (3) Investigate how TS documents were mishandled. The FBI investigation might mention the Presidential Records Act, but it is not driving 1‑3 above.
Strictly speaking, a proper investigation (3) should interview people separately, to piece together what happened, as impartially as possible. So the FBI investigation (3) is responding to Federal crimes, but not building a case against anyone in particular (e.g. Donald Trump). I think the FBI investigation (3) is still in a stage — as Sgt. Joe Friday would say on Dragnet — of “All we want are the facts.”