The key to the Mar-a-Lago documents case is not the bare fact that Donald Trump left the White House with classified documents in his possession. That might have been accidental. The bigger question is whether Trump refused to give up the documents even after they had been subpoenaed and Trump knew he had them.
Indeed, the Washington Post says today that the investigation "has come to focus on the obstruction elements of the case." And there's growing evidence that Trump deliberately tried to withhold documents even after the government asked for them back:
Federal investigators have gathered new and significant evidence that after the subpoena was delivered, Trump looked through the contents of some of the boxes of documents in his home, apparently out of a desire to keep certain things in his possession, the people familiar with the investigation said.
Investigators now suspect, based on witness statements, security camera footage, and other documentary evidence, that boxes including classified material were moved from a Mar-a-Lago storage area after the subpoena was served, and that Trump personally examined at least some of those boxes, these people said. While Trump’s team returned some documents with classified markings in response to the subpoena, a later FBI search found more than 100 additional classified items that had not been turned over.
....Investigators have also amassed evidence indicating that Trump told others to mislead government officials in early 2022, before the subpoena, when the National Archives and Records Administration was working with the Justice Department to try to recover a wide range of papers, many of them not classified, from Trump’s time as president, the people familiar with the investigation said.
The Post story adds some more detail to this, including evidence that Trump asked others for advice on how he could keep the documents he wanted.
And what were these documents about? The Post suggests they were related to Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who Trump turned against during the final weeks of his administration.
Needless to say, this is all sort of bizarre, even by Trump standards. And since the documents are classified, I suppose we'll never find out for sure what they were about.
POSTSCRIPT: This is yet another case of Trump being a moron. In the Stormy Daniels case, Trump should have delivered a suitcase of cash to her and kept everything anonymous. Instead, in order to save a pittance in taxes, he called the hush money "legal expenses," thus opening himself up to prosecution.
In the documents case, Trump could have photocopied the stuff he wanted to keep and given back all the originals. Why didn't he? Was he somehow under the impression that if he turned over the documents they'd become public record? Or what?
This should not be a surprise to anyone. If you marinated in Republican politics all day, you too would think that big cities have turned into hellholes under President Biden. Remember this?
Roughly speaking, every city has its bad areas, and everyone knows where they are. Stay away from them and you'll be fine. This is not exactly new advice.
