A picture does say a thousand words. I like how Umair Haque breaks this down. This idea—or even actual possibility—of selling out the country is all pretty terrifying. If this doesn't send shivers up and down your spine, you're not paying attention.
-Angela Valenzuela
Why the Case Against the Former President Is Going to Shake America, the World, and History
By now, you’ve seen the photo. Classified documents — some marked “Top Secret” — spread out on the floor of Donald Trump’s office, in his tacky beachfront estate. What the photo says is unmistakeable: the walls are closing in on Donald Trump.
Now, this story’s become incredibly convoluted. It’s getting tricky to follow. But I think it’d benefit us all to really understand it well. The best way to understand it, in fact, is the US Government’s affidavit about this so far, which makes it all incredibly clear. I’m going to quote directly from it (it’s compelling reading, and I highly recommend it in full):
- “NARA” — aka the National Archives” — upon Observing that It Was Missing Presidential Records from the Former President’s Administration, Attempted to Obtain the Missing Records Voluntarily from the Former President’s Representatives,
- Observing that the Fifteen Boxes Contained “Highly Classified Records,” NARA Sent a Referral to the Department of Justice,
- The Former President Delayed the FBI’s Access to the Fifteen Boxes,
- The FBI’s Review of the Fifteen Boxes Highlighted the National Security Implications of Their Improper Storage,
- After Obtaining Evidence Indicating that Additional Classified Records Remained at the Premises, DOJ Initially Sought Their Return Through the Issuance of a Grand Jury Subpoena,
- In Response to the Subpoena, Counsel for the Former President Provided a Limited Number of Documents Accompanied by a Certification that All Responsive Documents Were Produced Following a Diligent Search,
- After Further Investigation Indicated that the Response to the Subpoena Was Incomplete, that Obstructive Conduct Occurred in Connection with the Response to the Subpoena, and that Classified Information Remained at the Premises, DOJ Obtained a Court-Authorized Search Warrant,
- During the August 8 Execution of the Search Warrant at the Premises, the Government Seized Thirty-Three Boxes, Containers, or Items of Evidence, Which Contained over a Hundred Classified Records, Including Information Classified at the Highest Levels.
Get all that? The Justice Department tells the story with crystal clarity. While it’s complicated, that’s mostly because of Trump’s backpedalling and trickery.
And what it all adds up to is damning.
After Trump said he’d turned over everything — surprise, surprise, for a pathological liar — he hadn’t. So when the FBI — getting wind of this — raided his estate, they found more than twice what he’d already turned over. 33 boxes, versus 15. All of which, according to the Justice Department, “calls into serious question the representations made in the June 3 certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter.”
Who’s writing those words? Federal prosecutors are. There are a few truisms in life. Things sane people don’t want to do. Die. Marry wrong. Go broke. And get on the bad side of the US government. Everyone from El Chapo to Al Capone learned that the hard way. Federal prosecutors are building a clear-cut, powerful case for…
For what, exactly? Well, this affidavit alone already uses terms like “obstruction.” There’s a lightweight set of charges here, along those lines — obstruction of justice, improper use of what’s US government property, lying to the government, and so forth. None of those are charges any sane person would want filed against them — I use the term lightweight relatively.
Because beneath those are a far, far different — and weightier by about ten thousand tons — set of charges. What might those be? Let me quote the affidavit again: “The Executive Branch’s review here also serves another compelling interest that was not at issue in Nixon: The records at issue include sensitive and highly classified documents. As the government has explained, the Intelligence Community, under the supervision of the Director of National Intelligence, is conducting a classification review of those documents and an assessment of the potential risk to national security that could result from their disclosure.”
The lightweight set of charges is about taking — is it fair to say stealing? — the documents. But the heavyweight set of charges is about the consequences to national security of stealing classified documents. Those are grave, grave charges. Unimaginable ones, really. Because now we’re in a twilight zone kind of situation — an American President, charged formally with jeopardizing America’s own national security?
It’s safe to say that the case isn’t there fully. Yet. There’s no evidence so far that Trump did anything improper with the documents…except keep them in his office and storage room, and claim they were his, not the government’s. Like, I don’t know, send screenshots of them to Kim Jong Un’s secret WhatsApp account. Like, who knows, share them on the Google Drive for the World’s Aspiring Autocrats and Dictators. Or maybe — here’s a crazy one — zap them up to an Instagram account only Trump and his best friend for life Vlad Putin share.
Nope. No evidence that the former President say, sold state secrets, trafficked classified documents, had a whole second career slash side hustle more commonly known as espionage.
Not a bit of evidence of that. Yet.
But the question then of course becomes: well, why else hang on to all these documents? You can safely make three bets right about now. One, no other former President has boxes of classified documents in a storeroom. Because, two, no other former President — whatever their sins — were anywhere close to as shady, sleazy, and compromised. That brings me to the big one, bet number three.
You can bet everything — the farm, the house, the savings, the kids, the dog — that those very same federal prosecutors are also asking the very same question right about now. Did the former President engage in…espionage? It sounds — cliché alert, how many times have we all said this over the last few years — the plot of a bad spy movie. And yet the evidence there already is is something beyond compelling — it’s incredibly disturbing.
What evidence is that? Well, we know, for example, that Russia wanted to elevate Trump to the office of President so badly that it was one of its highest national priorities. Hence, the GRU hacked Hillary’s emails — a fact which American media is still afraid to discuss — and sank her campaign, with a little help from useful idiots like James Comey. Meanwhile, Russia’s military agencies collaborated to install Trump into the office of President, for the explicit goal of sowing internal discord and collapsing America from within. This isn’t some kind of conspiracy theory, by the way — it’s all on the journalistic record.
So it’s not some kind of far-fetched wild-eyed kind of hysteria to wonder. We could all see it in plain sight, after all. Was that an American President…making googly eyes at Vladimir Putin? Palling around with Kim Jong Un? Acting like a besotted teenager the moment a dictator or fascist or tyrant walked into the room? Did he really just compliment them like he was trying to win them over? Why did he always act like they had something on him? Are there really — as its been rumored forever at this point — really The Tapes?
There’s a principle that applies to logic, and it was invented by an old monk. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Occam’s razor. The simplest explanation is probably true — no matter how crazy or outlandish or unbelievable it seems. History’s proven what a powerful heuristic it really is. Were we…some kind of…divine creatures? No, man, we’re just walking apes, descended from bacteria. Wait, why do people get sick? Is it cosmic justice? The Three Fates, watching everyone, crones cutting the threads of life? Dude. It’s germs. They spread from you to me. Take a bath!
Even William of Occam, though, is turning over in his grave, boggle-eyed. Because rarely has his Razor been sharper than this. An American President…long rumored to be in league with every kind of sleazy dictator in the world…to be under their thumb…who openly despises democracy…installed with more than a little help from interference in American elections by a country that’s now making war in Europe…stealing box after box of classified documents… hiding them at home…and then not giving them back even when the government asked nicely…then didn’t ask nicely…and finally raided his house…to find even more than they ever imagined secreted away?
The story really is mind-melting.
You can bet that federal prosecutors are thinking exactly the same thing all of us are at exactly this moment. Well, all of us who aren’t Donald Trump’s cult, anyways. Did the former President sell out the country? Did he traffic those documents? Was it espionage?
I said three bets, but I lied. Let’s make it four. You can take it even further. And bet, in fact, that there’s a federal prosecutor or ten who’s practically drooling all over their Allen Edmonds loafers at making exactly that case. Please, they go to bed every night praying, let me have this one, God. Because if you were a federal prosecutor, well, making that case — prosecuting the former President the entire world hates with a passion, for selling out the country, for espionage? It’d be the political-legal equivalent of like suddenly becoming Mickey Mantle by way of the Terminator, and hitting a home run so hard that it flew over the nearest gulf, and went into the next state. It’d be not just the case of a lifetime, or even of the decade, not even the case of the century, but the gravest and greatest case in American history.
And if you won it? Well, you’d have the world at your feet, I imagine. You’d be a shoo-in for the next Presidential nomination, every law firm from here to Alpha Centauri would be begging you to let them put your name in big gold letters above their doors, Hollywood would come a-knocking faster than you can say “God, how did Netflix get so bad?” and every single publishing agent in Manhattan would faint every time you walked into the room.
Even if you lost the case, most of that would still be true. So you can bet, again, with utter surety, that every eager, square-jawed, stony-faced young federal prosecutor in all of Washington DC is asking the same question right now, if not for the sake of their country, decency, human civilization, or the right thing, then just for that of their career. And behind them? Are veritable legions in the FBI and so forth, who are asking exactly the same things — albeit, perhaps, for purer, nobler reasons.
The walls are closing in, my friends. There is little doubt at this point that federal prosecutors are out to get to the bottom of this. This ugly, sordid little man called Donald Trump. Who is he, really? First, he was New York’s laughingstock, the desperate wannabe. Then, he was President, by way of demagoguery. Then he was the leader of a neo-fascist movement, and after that, the instigator of a bloody coup. But you know and I know that we haven’t found the bottom of this pit in human form yet. More revelations are to come. And they’re likely to be even more explosive than these.
Who is Donald Trump, really? You’d think that sleazeball, laughingstock, demagogue, bully, fascist would be enough shame for most people in one lifetime. But Trump has no shame, and never did. So, therefore, he knows no bottom, either. It’s eminently possible that to that list will be added even more guttural levels of scandal and ugliness. Spy, traitor, criminal. Let your imagine run wild. Because that’s what everyone in Washington DC’s doing right about now, too. Asking questions — ones they’re not going to let go, until the truth emerges at last, and I suspect it’s going to be among history’s ugliest.
We’re going to find out who Donald Trump really was, all along. We both know, and we’ve always known, that, somehow, the truth of this man was going to be unspeakable, a quantum leap of sleaze beyond sordid, a whole new ballgame of despicable. And so if you think what we already know is bad — and it is — console yourself with this fact: my friend, the impossibly ugly truth of who Donald Trump really is may be exactly what we all suspected, all along. The walls are closing in. The endgame is afoot now. Napoleon, at least, had the isle of Elba. Trump? The way things are going now, he just might be remembered as the President who spent his last days in prison. Hey, don’t feel too bad for him. They have VCRs in there, I hear.
Umair
August 2022
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