A newly released property inventory from the Mar-a-Lago search indicates that the FBI found lots of classified documents. We already knew that. But they also found lots of folders marked classified but with no documents inside:
In Box No. 2, for example, taken from Trump’s office, there were 43 empty folders with classified banners; 28 empty folders labeled “Return to Staff Secretary/Military Aide”; 24 government documents marked confidential, secret or top secret; 99 news articles and other printed media; and 69 government documents or photos that were not classified.
It seems unlikely that even Donald Trump would take a bunch of empty folders from the White House as keepsakes or whatever. So what used to be in these empty folders?
There might be an innocent explanation. Maybe Trump took the documents out and put them somewhere else, where they've already been collected by either NARA or the FBI.
Maybe. But the most obvious explanation is that something happened to those documents. Trump could still have them. Or he might have destroyed them. Or he might have given them to someone.
As the Washington Post says, this is a developing story. And it's getting fishier with every passing day. Where are the missing documents?
When will the Iranians get their revenge? They, allegedly, targeted John Bolton. Think bigger! Or, you know, maybe the Russians will drop him out of a window! Putin knows how to deal with his enemies.
I know. I’m terrible. He’s certainly not worth the sacrifice. The only good republicans are dead ones!
And really… why do so many want to find “innocent explanations” for trumps behavior? He’s the worst despicable traitor ever. He sold the info. Blackmail.
Remember Trump's Razor: the stupidest explanation is the most likely. I'm still betting that he 1. didn't really know what, specifically was in all the folders, just that they were Super Top Secret Important Stuff for Amazing Presidents Only and 2. kept them because he was Mr. Forever President and Still In Charge and it made him feel good to go down to his office in the evening and fondle them and pretend he was a Big Man again instead of a doddering, decompensating old fool. Oh, and felon in possession of highly classified documents.
This is mostly my view, he kept them because they were President stuff and they supported his insistence he was still President.
But, then you have to ask how and why did he assemble this varied mass of stuff at all? Just because he could, or just because he could for some, perhaps vague, future purpose?
It’s my opinion (for what that’s worth) that everything he kept he kept because it provided some sort of leverage he thought he could use in the future. Likely something salacious that would perk his interest. Perhaps something indicating the information was gleaned in some salacious way. Nothing complex, just “sexy” stuff.
I’m still wondering about the binders of pictures. Hey, maybe they were what was in the empty folders and he took them out to have them in one place.
Does it really matter why he kept them? Sure it could add more charges, such as conspiracy or treason, but that this point he should be indicted and arrested for what has been made public.
1. "Chuck all that stuff into boxes in the removalist vans. We'll sort it out later."
2. "No you can't have it back. It's mine. Ask nicely and I might give you some."
Trumps razor = he’s a despicable traitor and should be executed. Don’t make excuses. Since he’ll never be prosecuted for his crimes, we can dispense with the presumption of innocence. He guilty of crimes against humanity. He’s a traitor. Hang the mother fucker. Give him the Qaddafi treatment. Bayonet up the ass!
👍👍👍👍👍
I couldn't say it better. Enough treating this guy like a normal person. He's not.
It's definitely way past time to stop being reasonable. What would the Rs say if the FBI found scads of empty TOP SECRET folders at Hilary Clinton's house? Every lefty pundit should set that as their baseline for this.
this is not about being reasonable. it's a) assessing what damage trump might have done and b) doing things by the absolute book so that if charges are brought there is a "clean" prosecution that allows trump's actions to hang himself.
There will be no prosecution. We’ll say, “Look what he did, Mr. and Ms.Voter. Is this what you want in a president?”
And the voters will yawn and say, “Sure, whatevs.”
They're at his other residences? I wouldn't be surprised if we hear about the FBI knocking with warrants at Bedminster and Trump Tower in the coming weeks.
This is an IC nightmare.
Clearly the MAGAts are right, there is a conspiracy to discredit TFG and sabotage his political prospects — and it is being perpetrated by TFG, his staff and lawyers. Nothing Democrats could do could possibly expose him as so completely irresponsible, stupid and unfit for any public office, than his mishandling of classified and unclassified government documents, and his bumbling attempts at defending his (almost certainly criminal) actions.
All they have, literally, is the Bob Loblaw defense: "Why should you go to jail for a crime somebody else noticed?"
His latest defense seem to be, "yeah, I did it, but so what? Why is this such a big deal?"
Conveniently, Scott Baio is MAGA AF, so he can join the legal team.
His teevee lawyering makes him more versed in law than Tom Fitton, too.
People are making much out of the chaotic state of the stuff in the boxes, but there is no reason to think the boxes were so disorganized before they got to Mar-a-Lago.
At some point Trump's lawyers insisted he go through the boxes himself and sort out what parts were classified and really had to be returned and which could be argued about and they knew they couldn't do it because they didn't have clearance to see those things and would never get it, so only he was the only person there who could possibly do it, and this chaotic mess is the state he left them in.
How and why he left his old socks in there is something I look forward to learning.
Empty folders are the new erased tape…
The new cloth-wiped server.
Perhaps he used those highly classified documents as a placemat for his KFC lunches, and left a pile of chicken bones and grease on them for the custodial staff to clean up and chuck out along with the super secret docs. Maybe it was one of those cleaning staff traitors (from shit hole countries) who dropped a dime on that old orange fuck.
If the FSB were doing their job, they should be collecting all the garbage at Il Duce's residences. Probably a treasure trove of intelligence available among the KFC buckets and Burger King wrappers.
It would be intelligence malpractice by a foreign country not to go to MAL to check things out before the Feds intervention. My guess is the Chinese took the classified documents.
Wouldn't foreign intelligence have cameras and simply get copies of the documents?
Or he might have given them to someone.
Given? Yeah, right.
Did have to laugh when Florida man announced one of the reasons for the search of Mar-a-Lago was that they believed he had Hillary's emails.
Meanwhile, Hillary still has her passport, as known from her being in attendance at the Venice Film Festival this week.
I contend there are three levels, each with different political valiance.
1) What we suspect, perhaps know. Basically, guilt in the court of public opinion (outside of the MAGA crew).
2) What can be proven, in a court of law
3) What the DOJ is willing to prosecute.
Each of the aforementioned three stages have materially different obstacles.
"It's not quid pro quo if they don't catch you." -- Alt Trump
"I did it. So what. Everyone did it, even Nixon." -- Alt Trump
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/09/02/politics/judge-releases-full-detailed-inventory-from-the-mar-a-lago-search/index.html
If these folders were numbered then some tracking and idea of contents possible. Otherwise, anyone’s guess as to whether they contained docs and when or even if they were going to be stuffed with scrap paper to look impressive when Trump wanted to impress someone.
Not sure exactly how this works, but I have to imagine that each folder should have a descriptor of some kind on the cover, maybe document title, and a reference number. There's also, from what I've seen in reports, some kind of chain-of-custody log that should be in there, plus the originating entity should have its own copy of the document and a distribution record so each copy can be tracked at all times. In theory. But what system invented by mere humans can survive trumpian chaos?
The feds have to have been frantically trying to match empty folders with loose documents in that stash, as a start. Then when they've figured out which ones are really missing they can get to the "damage assessment" part, that also includes figuring out who's seen the ones they found on the premises.
Truly an IC nightmare, as Dana Decker says, maybe not quite on the Snowden scale but then again who knows yet?
When they understood his attitude to documents they should have put RFID trackers on every page.
Current theory at imaginative right-wing sites like the New York Post is that the FBI pinned classified covers to innocuous documents for the purposes of releasing a propaganda photo. No doubt they scattered empty folders around for the same reason.
And then bribed Trump with $5 million to demand them back because they were really his, and he was innocent enough to believe they would do it.
It's Phils Mushnick all the way down.
If they find documents in the boxes they have no record of Trump having had access to they'll have to assume there were others that just any dingbat wandering around Mar-a-Lago could have picked up, stuffed in his pants and walked out with, and they'll have no idea what they were.
The important thing is that Trump forgot to put a cover sheet on his new TPS reports. The DOJ should go ahead and send him a new memo.
My bet is on "given them to someone else".
It is what I've thought from the beginning. The only explanation for why he took nuclear secrets that makes sense is to use them as currency to purchase foreign election interference in 2024.
You know, I don't remember seeing much mention of when these documents date from. It could be that he's been grabbing ones that struck his fancy from day 1 and squirreling them away down there the whole time, not just having them all thrown into the trucks in January 2021. There's such a shitload of stuff there, just in the FBI inventories.
They have to be things he saw some kind of advantage in-- because everything is transactional for him-- and maybe not the same advantage in each case. Showing off to impress guests, bartering for foreign claims that some Democrat is crooked as you propose, secret knowledge about somebody he doesn't like or wants something from, secret knowledge to give to somebody he's intimidated by like Lavrov or Xi or Kim, stuff like that.
The dude is such a playground of pathologies that the possible reasons are endless.
In the "secret knowlege" category, the FBI inventory included intell into about President Macron (France). Previously, the former guy (the LOSER!) had often bragged that he knew all about Macron's "sex life."
Well, at least the Macron report wasn't found in his bedroom ... or was it?
"Well, at least the Macron report wasn't found in his bedroom ... or was it?"
Melania DID say she felt violated by the search.
Macron's "sex life"? Melania feeling violated?
Could it be? I thought she had a thing for Justin Trudeau
"Called satyriasis in men, nymphomania in women, this compulsive fornicatress is indiscriminate in her liaisons".
H/t Maude Lebowski
She had to go out and buy all new underwear because she's a bigger germophobe than her husband!
Well, the world wants to know, what did she do with her old underwear? Auction it, send it to Goodwill (ha!), feed it to starving piranhas, or just leave it in a box somewhere on a streetcorner for whomever happens by?
Seven truckloads of Melania undies with clear provenance could become real collector's items!
Just saw this which gives a partial answer:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2022/09/03/the-fbi-seized-no-boxes-with-press-clippings-that-postdate-november-2020/
That is saying the boxes he randomly stuffed things into during the last two months of his presidency are yet to be accounted for, and she doesn't come right out and say it, but they would be stuffed with whatever secret intelligence he happened to see, or asked for, while planning the coup and that he may have assumed he could use as leverage against one party or another whether in or out of office.
Why haven't they raided every one of his residences and properties?
You would have to think he's squirreled something away pretty cleverly, but someone else is going to know where it went, he can't actually just drive himself anywhere.
In a very critical way, the punditry is constantly missing the forest for the trees.
Empty classification folders is no different than Trump deliberately pulling TS/SCI documents from a SCIF or claiming to have a standing order to declassify things he wanted to take with him wherever he wanted to go.
Trump never cared about keeping our nation's secrets, secret.
Trump wasn't interested in serving his country; in his mind the country was supposed to be serving him. They were his generals, his attorney general, and his military.
L'état, c'est moi.
Like +25. And this is something the MagaReps will never grasp.
I noticed the yellow folders all lacked the redacted cover sheets all the others had. Lack of a cover would seem to indicate the folder was not currently in use. Given Trump's childish packrattiness, maybe he really *did* grab a couple boxes of the things just for the pure hell of it? I haven't read anything yet from the G other than that there were empty folders. Nothing about missing contents. The speculation is all coming from civilians...
Where are the missing docs? Simple: on Hillary's server. And Hunter's laptop. And in Dominion voting machines.
I have a bridge to sell you.