Just
a week ago, a judge ordered the release of the affidavit on which the FBI
applied for a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago. That document revealed that Trump
had taken highly classified documents from the government and held them in
insecure locations. That document was horrifying, but it referred only to
documents the government had already recovered, not the ones for which it would
go on to search for on August 8.
Today the
unsealing of a court filing revealed that the August 8 search
turned up more than 11,000 documents or photographs that were not classified,
31 documents marked CONFIDENTIAL, 54 marked SECRET, and 18 marked TOP SECRET.
In addition, agents found 48 empty folders marked CLASSIFIED, and 42 empty
folders marked to be returned to a military aide. Those documents were not
filed with the envelopes.
This
story is unprecedented and explosive. As Sue Gordon, who was principal deputy
director of national intelligence from 2017 to 2019, told MSNBC’s Nicolle
Wallace yesterday, in addition to
the potential for exposing national secrets, the exposure of the networks and
techniques that were in those documents could unravel intelligence networks
that took decades to build.
The
implications for the destruction of our national security at Trump’s hands are enormous.
And
yet, after President Joe Biden’s speech last night saying
that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that
threatens the very foundations of our republic,” Republicans have rushed to
attack Biden as divisive, hateful, or disparaging of half the country, claiming
far more support than they have. Biden offered them an off-ramp from this
profound scandal, inviting them to stand on the side of defending democracy,
and they refused it.
They
have tied themselves to what looks like it is on the way to becoming the
biggest attack on our national security in our history, but it is not clear to
me that even remaining Republican voters will be okay with the compromise of
our national security. National security used to be very important to
Republicans.
Trump’s
attorney general Bill Barr seemed today to
be trying to get whatever is left of the Republican establishment to abandon
the former president. He told two different Fox News Channel programs: “I…think
for them to have taken things to the current point, they probably have pretty
good evidence…. I think the driver on this from the beginning was…loads of
classified information sitting in Mar-a-Lago. People say this was
unprecedented, well it’s also unprecedented for a president to take all this
classified information and put them in a country club.”
“I
can’t think of a legitimate reason why they…could be taken…away from the
government if they’re classified.” He added that he was “skeptical” that Trump
had declassified the documents. “I think it’s highly improbable, [and]...if in
fact he sort of stood over scores of boxes, not really knowing what was in
them, and said ‘I hereby declassify everything in here,’ that would be such an
abuse and…shows such recklessness it’s almost worse than taking the documents.”
Among
all the Republican backlash over Biden’s speech, today,
veteran CNN White House reporter John Harwood said:
“The
core point he made in that political speech about a threat to democracy is
true.
“Now,
that’s something that’s not easy for us, as journalists, to say. We’re brought
up to believe there’s two different political parties with different points of
view and we don’t take sides in honest disagreements between them. But that’s
not what we’re talking about. These are not honest disagreements. The
Republican Party right now is led by a dishonest demagogue.
“Many,
many Republicans are rallying behind his lies about the 2020 election and other
things as well. And a significant portion—or a sufficient portion—of the constituency
that they’re leading attacked the Capitol on January 6th.
Violently.
“By
offering pardons or suggesting pardons for those people who violently attacked
the Capitol, which you’ve been pointing out numerous times this morning, Donald Trump
made Joe Biden’s point for him.”
Shortly
afterward, Harwood announced he was no longer with CNN.
A
source told Dan Froomkin of Press Watch that Harwood had been told last month
he was being let go, despite his long-term contract, and that he used his last
broadcast to send a message.
—Heather
Cox Richardson
“…Above all, there were the staggering 55 top secret documents in total that were retrieved from Mar-a-Lago, some with HCS and NOFORN markings. As an unnamed source familiar with the search told the Washington Post, the stash contained 'among the most sensitive secrets we hold'.
ReplyDelete“All of this leaves several burning questions. Could any of this hyper-sensitive material already have found its way into the wrong hands?
“Again, we don’t know, other than that the director of national intelligence is reviewing the Mar-a-Lago documents to assess their possible impact on national security. One critically obvious but unstated issue is whether undercover agents will need to be relocated to guard their lives.
“Then there is the overriding puzzle: what, if anything, was Trump intending to do with the documents and why has he gone to such tortuous lengths to hold on to them? Cohen, who watched Trump’s antics up close for many years, thinks he knows the answer. ‘Donald intended to use the documents to extort the US government and prevent an indictment and conviction. In essence: a get out of jail free card.’
“Which brings us to the third pressing question: will Trump be indicted? Certainly, the peril of a criminal prosecution now looms large.
“The DoJ has made clear in recent filings that it feels it has evidence of obstruction of a federal investigation. He also faces possible indictment under the Espionage Act, which punishes unauthorized retention or disclosure of national security information, and a third law prohibiting mishandling of sensitive government records. ‘There’s no question what he had, there’s no question where he had it,’ McCabe said. ‘We now know there was some reason to believe the Trump team was potentially misrepresenting things and lying to the FBI, so this is very serious.’
“McCabe says the investigation into such a prominent political figure who has indicated he might stand in the 2024 presidential election is fraught with peril. ‘You could appear as though you were conducting some sort of political retaliation, and we are absolutely not that kind of nation.’…
“If prosecutors are staved off because the subject is a politician who might be running for office, McCabe said, ‘or because they’ve said nasty things about us – then we actually have given in to politicization. And we’ve begun to create a class of citizens in this country who are above the law’” (Ed Pilkington, The Guardian).