Some for you and some for him

Aug 11th, 2022 | By
Category: Notes and Comment Blog

They asked Trump nicely before they raided the place.

Former President Donald J. Trump received a subpoena this spring in search of documents that federal investigators believed he had failed to turn over earlier in the year, when he returned boxes of material he had improperly taken with him upon moving out of the White House, three people familiar with the matter said.

The existence of the subpoena helps to flesh out the sequence of events that led to the search of Mr. Trump’s Florida home on Monday by F.B.I. agents seeking classified material they believed might still be there, even after efforts by the National Archives and the Justice Department to ensure that it had been returned.

In other words Trump handed over some of the documents but secretly kept others. The raid this week was because of the others, the ones he secretly kept. That’s not something he was supposed to be doing. It’s more like something a double agent would be doing. A Kim Philby without the brains.

Two people briefed on the classified documents that investigators believe remained at Mar-a-Lago indicated that they were so sensitive in nature, and related to national security, that the Justice Department had to act.

I’ve seen people point out that Trump could have been planning to use the documents to extort favors or $$$ or both.

The subpoena factored into a visit that Jay Bratt, the Justice Department’s top counterintelligence official, made with a small group of other federal officials to Mar-a-Lago weeks later, in early June, one of the people said.

The officials met with Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Evan Corcoran. Mr. Trump, who likes to play host and has a long history of trying to charm officials inquiring about his practices, also made an appearance. During the visit, the officials examined a basement storage area where the former president had stowed material that had come with him from the White House.

I wonder what Trump does by way of trying to charm officials inquiring about his practices. I mean I genuinely wonder, because I’ve never seen any trace of the kind of charm that would work on grownup people with serious jobs. We’ve all seen him try it with reporters, right? Being “affable”? But his affable is as repellent as his raging or sneering or insulting. I don’t think he has the ghost of an idea how to charm grownup people with serious jobs.

Mr. Trump’s team has declined to disclose the contents of the search warrant. A number of organizations, including The New York Times, are seeking in federal court to have it unsealed.

Some senior Republicans have been warned by allies of Mr. Trump not to continue to be aggressive in criticizing the Justice Department and the F.B.I. over the matter because it is possible that more damaging information related to the search will become public.

Oh really. So they’re saying back off because it’s going to get worse so let’s not piss off the feds too much now? Is that it?

When archivists recovered 15 boxes this year, they discovered several pages of classified material and referred the matter to the Justice Department. But officials later came to believe that additional classified material remained at Mar-a-Lago.

Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers have maintained that they were trying all along to cooperate with federal officials and had kept an open line of communication.

But others familiar with federal officials’ efforts to recover the documents have said that Mr. Trump resisted returning property that belonged to the government, despite being told that he needed to.

What does that “trying all along to cooperate” mean? What’s to try? Trump had to hand over the documents, end of story – there’s no “trying” and no “cooperate,” there’s just doing what the law says he has to do. He’s not a god-emperor.

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