Donald Trump’s team has been accused of concealing top secret documents to obstruct an FBI investigation into potential mishandling of classified material.
In an explosive court filing the US Department of Justice [DOJ] said documents were “likely concealed and removed” from a storage room at Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to prevent them being recovered by the government.
So, our political raid didn’t work, we’ve found nothing interesting nor smoking gun. So, obviously, you must have taken those secrets and sold them to the Russians before we got there. QED.
TIL, way back in the 1950s, President Truman–hardly an anarchist–had this to say about the FBI:
That’s only a few decades after the FBI was established. Imagine what he’d say now.
I am reminded of the excellent Sunday Sport:-
“Lancaster bomber found on moon surface. Exclusive photos next week”.
One week later
“Where has it gone? Exclusive photos reveal that Lancaster bomber is no longer on moon surface”.
Perhaps the documents they were looking for ( and cannot admit to) are the ones which prove a conspiracy to deny Trump the presidency in 2016 and try to impeach him once in office. Which if he has them will be somewhere safe. They don’t give a toss about any other docs.
Clearly in this case, absence of evidence is proof of guilt. Just like the Russia collusion hoax, pee tapes, ‘Fine people’ hoax etc, etc…
The Deep State, which doesn’t even exist, is desperate to prevent President Trump from running again in 2024.
Whatever Mr. T did, he did it under the protection, and I assume supervision, of the secret service- You know, those guys assigned to keep him alive.
Further point. Is it alleged that Trump spread secret documents around on the floor, or was someone else mishandling them?
The DOJ later “developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed
Is this a particularly American use of language because to me “developed” here suggests an element of manipulation.
Isn’t “developing evidence” the normal MO for the DoJ if they want a conviction no matter what when they’ve got nothing to work with?
I do believe there’s been some egg-face interfaces regarding this kind of thing in the news recently.
They’ll be trotting out the old standby soon: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Having some acquaintance with the care and feeding of classified material, there may be more to this than “Orange Man Bad”.
If the reporting that some of these documents were classified TS, and codeworded with compartments like SCI and TK, is correct… then their contents actually are rather important and sensitive, rather than “NAAFI RESTRICTED” publications about shock-testing of carpet tiles.
Which means – at least the “US/UK Eyes Only” level, and I’d need evidence that “US NOFORN” is less controlled – that they’re strictly accounted for: if you are issued anything classified SECRET, it goes on your MOD Form 102 (or the US equivalent) and a receipt note goes back to the sender so they can remove it from their list. If you print off a document at that classification, it’s logged by the print server and you also record it in a file by the printer (what you printed and when, and either the date you shredded the working copy as no longer needed or the date and record number of where it went on your F102).
It gets mustered yearly; a Chief with a clipboard goes through your list of holdings, and you produce each document or disc to be inspected and to confirm you still have it in your possession, then the Chief does a random page-by-page check of some of the unbound documents (tactical doctrine in ring binders, for instance) to ensure that not only is the folder present, but all numbered pages are still in place.
(There’s also handling issues like the way you can keep OFFICIAL SENSITIVE in a locked desk drawer, SECRET needs a proper security cabinet, and higher needs “more secure still” usually in a strictly-controlled environment – but doubtless some of those get waived or ignored for Presidents)
This is important because it’s why the various bodies producing those reports, will have a very good idea of what was signed out to President Trump or his staff, and what was returned or confirmed as properly destroyed, and what is still “he had it, it never came back, and it’s still on his flick”.
Unfortunately, “I had some ‘above secret’ documents and now I don’t, and I can’t remember where I left them” is not something to be handwaved away.
An uncharitable explanation would be that Trump traded highly classified material to the Russians, the North Koreans, or the Grey Aliens from Planet Zort in exchange for… whatever.
A less conspiracist view would be that Trump lost, discarded or destroyed some as “boring” or “irrelevant”, and didn’t conduct the well-documented procedure for confirming “it’s been crosscut shredded and incinerated, as confirmed by a named observer, please remove it from my list of holdings”.
Which would suggest that the FBI are actually being uncharacteristically generous, in reducing the list of “you or your people signed for it; where is it?” items for Trump to account for.
@Jason Lynch
There also should be a bunch of people indicted with Trump. The document control people are tasked with recovering all classified documents when a person leaves government. Missing Top Secret documents require reporting up the security chain in 24 hours. That not happening should have triggered an investigation 18 months ago reaching up to the Undersecretary level.
So that means that the documents were either declassified or the Brandon administration purposely ignored the law. Until now.
For all you wogs out there that aren’t familiar with the US legal system:
When prosecutors start talking about charging people with obstruction, it’s because there is no evidence of the crime they wanted to prosecute in the first place.
That’s where we are now with Trump. And in other news, the Dept. of Justice has announced that they “probably” won’t decide on whether to bring charges against Trump until after the November elections.
They have nothing and are looking for a “Plan B”.
And when the Security Officer looks at the list of “signed out to Trump” documents, and asks for them back, and gets ignored… are you going to charge them with “doing their job but not getting a reply”?
Does the FBI immediately go after Trump… and be accused of being Democrat stooges persecuting the real winner of the 2020 election?
Given how touchy everything involving US politics currently is, I’m minded to go with the idea that Trump’s been given a lot of rope and a lot of opportunity for “seriously, those documents need to come back” before it escalated this far.
But I’ve yet to hear an informed defence of Trump’s situation here, that doesn’t hinge on “the FBI are out to get him” and “if the President does it that means it’s not illegal” (worked OK for Nixon, didn’t it?)
But absence of evidence of absence is evidence of absence of propriety.
“the secret service … guys assigned to keep him alive”: they originated as part of the Department of the Treasury – they’re not part of the FBI.
P.S. Nominative determinism: FBI is an anagram of fib.
And when the Security Officer looks at the list of “signed out to Trump” documents, and asks for them back, and gets ignored… are you going to charge them with “doing their job but not getting a reply”?
Your ignorance is showing.
There was no “Security Officer” and there was no “sign out list”, and you’d know that if you had a passing acquaintance with the facts. This involved the National Archives, and Trump and his attorneys had been dealing with representatives from the National Archives and the FBI for months regarding the status some of the documents Trump had taken for his private archives. Trump and his attorneys were cooperating with the National Archives and the FBI, and had, in fact, already turned over a large number of documents requested by those agencies.
But I’ve yet to hear an informed defence of Trump’s situation here, that doesn’t hinge on “the FBI are out to get him” and “if the President does it that means it’s not illegal” (worked OK for Nixon, didn’t it?)
The DOJ and FBI allege Trump illegally possessed classified documents. Trump says that isn’t true. What more is to be said? Neither the DOJ nor the FBI have provided any details of what Trump is supposed to have in his possession. And, given that the DOJ has released a photo of some of the documents in question, they can’t be too sensitive (as sending photos of classified documents to news agencies might not be legal or in the national interest).
Remember the whole “Trump held on to the Nuke Codes” thing that was leaked to the press right after the raid? Where’d that go? DOJ says they’ve reviewed all the documents seized. You really think they’d hold back on informing the nation if they’d found Nuke codes in Trump’s closet? No, what’s happened is they’ve reviewed the documents and are talking “obstruction”… That means they don’t have shit. Period.
Distrust of the DOJ and FBI has not developed in a vacuum. Understand that this has happened against the backdrop of a concerted effort by DOJ and the FBI to suppress evidence of criminality by Hunter Biden which has direct links to Joe Biden (the “Big Guy”), and DOJ’s purposeful failure to properly protect conservative Supreme Court justices from threats of violence, and at least actual attempt at assassination. Then there’s DOJ’s labeling parents domestic terrorists for daring to exercise their right to control their children’s education. The DOJ and FBI have worked very hard to undermine their own credibility and have repeatedly provided evidence of widespread political bias, as well as evidence suggesting outright corruption.
The other thing that needs mentioning is the manner in which Hillary Clinton was treated when it was discovered that she had violated the law with her home-brew server containing classified information, and how that treatment differed from the manner in which Trump was treated.
If you’re going to raid the home of a former president, you’d better find yourself a smoking gun right away. If you don’t, then there will be those who, justified or not, will become convinced that the matter at hand was political, rather than legal.
@Dennis
100%. It’s a game the feds love to play. If you can’t find a crime, invent a crime you can entrap them with instead. They sent undercover feds (not exactly undercover, though, since everyone could tell they were feds) to the Justice for Jan 6 rally in DC, in an effort to find some “insurrectionists.” Instead, they found a peaceful event, where there were actually more media and law enforcement officials than attendees.
But hey, the deep state got to play dress-up for a day. Check out the matching haircuts and sunglasses!
https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-jr-mocked-undercover-feds-justice-for-j6-rally-2021-9
Didn’t stop Business Insider from engaging in the ol’ “we were not able to confirm” routine, though.
Dennis,
I’m going to have to demand proof for the notion that even a US President can just acquire quantities of SECRET (let alone more highly protected) material without any documentation trail or record. Having had to work with the stuff for far too long, letting it out of your hands and being unable to produce a custody chit or equivalent that says “loaned to D Trump, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue” is a Very Bad Thing, and the defence of “the President took it and said not to worry” is unlikely to pass muster when you have to… well… muster your holdings.
This stuff is accounted for and tracked.
Trump “turned over a large number of the documents” – and, on the evidence so far, had held onto others, which were then recovered in the infamous FBI raid. We’re now grinding through the process of finding out what he had, what’s still missing, and whether (a) Presidents are immune from the requirement for proper storage of PMM, (b) whether that still applies to ex-Presidents.
Has he turned in, or had seized, all the material he acquired? If not, then there are valid questions like “so where did the rest of that highly classified material go and who has it now?”
A key difference with the “Hillary server” issue is that when found to have been running a personal server (not wise), she had material that on review was decided should have been classified but wasn’t at the time: but even there, there were issues like an ongoing argument over one e-mail exchange which an (unnamed) agency claimed should have been TS but which the State Department (who originated it) said needed no protective marking at all. (And, security rules do say that it’s the author’s responsibility to set the protective marking…)
I’m always amusedly sceptical about that sort of “retrospective classification” as attempted by the US: the naval analyst Norman Polmar was told in an open briefing that the then-new USS Seawolf could make 35 knots at top speed. When he printed that in the Proceedings of the USNI he was threatened with prosecution – apparently between briefing and him writing his article, that information had been “reclassified”. (It didn’t survive the most cursory challenge)
There’s a definite difference between an agency arriving to say “that information should be protectively marked, at a classification higher than the system you’re handling it on” (which is not a good thing and has been known to cause “shut down the network, swap all the hard disks, hope you had a backup from before that idiot put that info on there”) and acquiring, then being unable to muster or return when required, secret or higher-marked material that was always clearly identified as such.
Jason,
Jim Comey was very clear about what Hilary had. Reclassification wasn’t the issue:
“From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.”
I’m going to have to demand proof for the notion that even a US President can just acquire quantities of SECRET (let alone more highly protected) material without any documentation trail or record.
Straw man argument. I didn’t say any of that.
What I said was this: Your use of the terms “Security Officer” and “Lists” made it obvious that you haven’t a clue as to the policies, procedures and protocols related to classified materials being handled by the President.
The DOJ isn’t alleging that Trump violated policies, procedures and protocols while in the White House. What they initially alleged was that Trump improperly took classified materials with him as part of his personal papers. That has nothing to do with Security Officers and sign-out lists, and you’d know that if you’d been paying attention. And as I mentioned before, now that the DOJ is focusing on “obstruction” after their full review of the documents seized, it seems pretty clear that whatever Trump did have didn’t amount to much. If it did, DOJ would have leaked it by now.
Look, you want Trump prosecuted. And any old reason will do. I get it. Just be honest about it: You hate him and you want him destroyed. It isn’t about what he did or didn’t do, it’s about what he is. Because if it was really about what he did, you’d actually know the facts of the matter, wouldn’t you?
“From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.”
Don’t confuse him with facts, Jack
He doesn’t need my help, but in Jason’s defence much of the problem here is the startling media bias surrounding all this since Trump appeared.
I’m only aware of Comey’s comments because I’m in the US a lot, and follow US politics (which is rarely boring).
Fox is in the tank for the Republicans, while all the rest are Democrats. And I mean explicitly. The BBC follows the majority on this.
It’s actually unnerving to see BBC and other UK coverage if you’re aware of both sides.
“So, our political raid didn’t work, …”
Well, if you read the rest of the article, it’s clear that some material was found and what they are saying is that they suspect that there is more to be found. So the raid did work (whether or not it is political to enforce the law is a separate matter).
Dennis. Jason can speak for himself, but I don’t get the feeling he’s out to ‘get Trump’; he’s just passing on what he’s experienced in handling secret material.
@Jason
“Given how touchy everything involving US politics currently is, I’m minded to go with the idea that Trump’s been given a lot of rope and a lot of opportunity for ‘seriously, those documents need to come back’ before it escalated this far.”
Bruh.
You are severely naive when it comes to how the government works. Especially with establishment administrations like Biden’s (or Bush’s, to be fair), the federal government is akin to a high school clique. They will use any obnoxious talking point or justification to engage in political witch hunts and add to the rumor mill. They turned an unarmed meandering at the Capitol, where Capitol Police opened the doors for protestors and the only actual death was a police officer shooting an unarmed woman, into an “insurrection,” and as we speak there are still people rotting in jail waiting for trial–just because they sat in Nancy Pelosi’s chair or something. The feds don’t give their opponents any real choices. You either rot in solitary confinement for months, while being denied medication and showers, or you take a plea deal and give a fake confession while throwing your friends under the bus, just so you can eat a decent meal.
You also seem to be viewing this FBI raid in a vacuum. This is not by any means an isolated incident. Anyone paying any attention to U.S. politics for the past 6 years knows that this is just one of many “coincidental” incidents where the government’s various agencies are going after one particular guy, or at least anyone associated with him. the democrats have used melodramatic rhetoric about “racism” and “white supremacy” and “threats to our democracy” for decades whenever there’s an election cycle. They especially turn up the heat when they’re failing miserably. LBJ put out a fear-mongering ad about atomic warfare to beat Barry Goldwater. Hillary claimed a cartoon frog was KKK propaganda. Biden associated a 17-year-old kid defending himself with the alt-right and still continues to misquote Trump, claiming he called white supremacists “very fine people.”
The FBI’s *new* angle, as other people have mentioned, is that Trump is “obstructing justice.” If there was any actual classified (not de-classified) material at Mar-A-Lago, there would be very little attention given to any obstruction efforts. That would be like putting Edward Snowden on trial for an overdue library book. The FBI and DOJ are pretty much admitting, “We have nothing, but maybe we can get him on a technicality.” That’s literally how corrupt they are. Even at the state level, NY Governor Cuomo put some Proud Boys in prison, not for any real reason (they were arrested for a 17-second fistfight where no one went to hospital and no one pressed charges), and a few of them are still in prison upstate to this day. Had nothing to do with “justice” or “getting rid of white supremacy.” One of the PBs has a black wife, for fuck’s sake. Cuomo was up for re-election at the time, and he needed a narrative to frighten constituents into voting for him. They’re willing to take average Americans away from their families *for years* to win elections.
As for why Trump isn’t being too forthcoming yet, this has been his precise strategy with everything the left has thrown at him. He purposely lets his aggressors and the media make their ridiculous claims and dig a hole so deep that, when the truth finally comes out, he keeps the receipts and lets them sleep in the bed they’ve made. That’s how CNN went from a moderately respected network to the shit sandwich it is now. With the Steele dossier, the Russia collusion hoax, every misquote, every weird accusation they’ve invented, Trump lets them punch themselves out to exhaustion, and then shows the public how badly they’ve been lied to. Even better, he’s baiting the left into wasting time on the FBI raid, January 6 hearings, abortion and trans culture war bullshit, etc. so come midterms or 2024 they have absolute shit on their track record. Trump, even with his Twitter feuds and appeals to the base, delivered at least a few results that he ran on. The left will have done nothing to fix inflation, the border crisis, energy prices, crime rates, etc., but will try to win based on “I made speeches about how evil republicans are, and look at all the trans people in my cabinet.” They know that’s not enough to convince voters, hence the FBI raid.
It’s always the same shit cliffhangers…”We found some stuff,” “There’s more to come,” “We will disclose the information once it becomes available,” “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.” Why are so many people unaware of these tactics? The government pulls this shit over and over again. Please notice the pattern. You don’t have to be Alex Jones to see it.
Well, if you read the rest of the article, it’s clear that some material was found and what they are saying is that they suspect that there is more to be found.
The DOJ has already announced they’ve finished reviewing all the documents seized in the raid.
Ask yourself the following question: How does one justify the suspicion there are more classified documents to be found amongst the documents seized if all the documents seized have been reviewed?
Dennis,
We’re agreed that classified material is logged and recorded, with “who currently has custody of what” documented?
In which case, a very likely reason why there’s “suspicion that there are more classified documents”, is that the list of “what Trump handed in” and the list of “what was found at Mar-A-Lago” still leaves gaps in the list of Trump’s documented holdings.
Now, when ordinary people mislay classified documents, life gets uncomfortable and exciting – especially when the material involved is properly missing (custodian can’t produce it, hasn’t confirmed return or destruction)
(Ordinary people who misclassify e-mails also get a bollocking, but it’s less severe and the problem’s usually easier to fix).
If he had a hundred controlled documents, and returned or properly destroyed fifty, and twenty-five were found at Mar-A-Lago… then there’d be rather more than “a suspicion” that he’s still got twenty-five to account for.
Conversely, if every entry on “this is what President Trump, or his staff representatives, signed for” has now got a corresponding entry of “returned, confirmed destroyed, recovered from his residence” against it, then he’s got no grounds for concern (and what’s the reason for more intervention?)
It may just be simple incompetence and bad administration. Or it may not. Time will tell…
dfljadlkfj,
“That would be like putting Edward Snowden on trial for an overdue library book.”
The funny thing is that what Edward Snowden released publicly about PRISM and XkeyScore was just a load of PowerPoints of an obvious solution to an entirely legal activity. It had all the revelation of slipping out the location of the gift shop at Kennedy Space Centre.
In which case, a very likely reason why there’s “suspicion that there are more classified documents”, is that the list of “what Trump handed in” and the list of “what was found at Mar-A-Lago” still leaves gaps in the list of Trump’s documented holdings.
Interesting that neither the DOJ nor the FBI have publicly stated that there are additional missing classified documents that were not recovered, despite the fact that they’ve reviewed all of the documents seized. If they are working off lists of missing documents provided by the National Archives, then either all of the classified documents in question have been seized and recovered, or they haven’t. There really isn’t any “suspicion” involved in this; either the FBI found everything they were looking for, or they didn’t.
Given that the DOJ is now talking about obstruction of justice, rather than a violation of law due to mishandling classified documents, it would appear that any “suspicion” there is doesn’t reside at the DOJ.
I’d also note that the DOJ is now saying there will probably not be a determination of whether to pursue an indictment until after the November elections. Interestingly, the DOJ did not claim that the additional time was needed because there were documents still unaccounted for.
Just because some Trump-hating left-wing “journalist” says there’s “suspicion”, that doesn’t mean there’s “suspicion” where it actually counts.
Try again.
Dennis,
If you’re right and Trump has handed in – or had lifted from one of his residences – everything he had signed for, then he has nothing to fear and will soon be rejoicing in his triumph over the forces arrayed against him.
Given that nobody at the FBI or DOJ has said “all the classified documents that Trump possessed are now accounted for” either, it would appear that there may still be suspicions.
(And the amusing gambit of “nobody has said that…” – nobody at the DOJ or FBI has said that Donald Trump did not eat the corpse of Jimmy Hoffa, explaining why he’s never been found. Nobody at the DOJ or FBI has said that Hilary Clinton is not actually a carnivorous lizard wearing a ‘human costume’ sewn from the skins of the infant children she devours. Nobody at the DOJ or FBI has said that Ronald Reagan was not actually Adolf Hitler with a different hairstyle and carefully-shaved moustache. And so it goes…)
It’s pretty simple in this case: these documents are controlled and accounted for, and at least in the UK the contents of a MOD Form 102 are not made public even if someone is being investigated for mislaying some (can’t think of a single case in the UK where such has been done).
If all of Trump’s classified holdings are now accounted for, anyone trying to make a case of “but he might have somehow acquired more that nobody knows about” is going to look, at best, foolish and vexatious without extremely convincing evidence (that will be hard to find…) If they aren’t… then it’s up to Trump to produce them or explain what happened to them.
That’s the “how” of the way these documents are managed and some likely outcomes: who’s actually got what information and paperwork, will emerge over time.
@Bloke on M4
Yeah, I was just making the point that the FBI wouldn’t be making such a big deal of “obstruction” over the charge of putting national security at risk. Only used Snowden as an analogy since he was similarly accused of mishandling classified information. Whether the information was a reason for concern, or whether the mishandling was justified, that’s another debate for another time.
@Dennis
“Just because some Trump-hating left-wing “journalist” says there’s “suspicion”, that doesn’t mean there’s “suspicion” where it actually counts.”
This is how I can tell you understand the U.S. media. The reporters will spout bullshit, and when they are confronted with their inaccuracies, they just excuse it as “some people are saying” or “there are questions surrounding,” or the ever-so-popular “Well we don’t know the answers, but at least we’re starting an honest conversation.”
I understand there are a lot of people on this blog who are on the outside looking in from other countries, and someone mentioned before that most of the information Brits get about America is from the BBC, but conservative news from here is readily available on the internet as well, and easier to access than the telly. If I had not already been a democrat years ago, I would be reading as many different points of view on these topics as possible. If someone is honestly interested in understanding current events in another country, they don’t look at roughly half the electorate and dismiss them as crazies when they don’t understand the behavior. They take at least two seconds to see where these people are coming from.
There are people on the right who do the same when it comes to AntiFa and the like. I’ve previously known some people who currently hang out with that leftist crowd. No, that doesn’t mean I agree with them, like them, respect them, or am even on speaking terms with them anymore. But it means I have an idea of why they behave that way, and I can understand better than many others what is likely to happen within those groups.
I can understand someone being ignorant about something. I can’t understand why such a person would continue to argue back and forth about what’s likely to happen to Trump when not only have they spent much/any time in the U.S., and not only have they not heard any of the counterarguments, but they haven’t even sought out the other side of the story, and blindly believe the state propaganda coming from both continents.
It’s like when I had a roommate who kept saying he would pay rent “tomorrow.” The other roommate, who was new to New York and didn’t have experience with bullshitters, said “Well he told us he’ll pay” but opened his eyes when I entertained the idea that he was just fucking us over. And I was right. Over two thousand dollars later.
The point I am trying to make is that the timing of this is suspicious. The Top Secret documents are serial numbered and bar coded. A security facility is responsible for those documents even though they may be signed out to someone in the President’s office. That security facility has to swear on penalty of perjury that they have inventoried the documents once a year.
So even if the documents were dumped in the President’s office the day he left, they would be aware the documents were missing last January. An investigation is required within 24 hours of notice. So a hue and cry should have started months ago. If not, someone in the security facility should be going to jail for pencil whipping the inventory.
The fact that the documents were missing should have been noted and acted on between 6 and 18 months ago. So either the documents were declassified or there has been incredible breaches of security procedures at the Agency responsible for those documents.
The guy was already impeached while in office, and had the threat of a second impeachment at the time, and he knew damn well that the swamp would try to stop him from running again. On what planet do they think he snuck out with a bunch of military secrets and classified information about President Xi or something, all the while snickering and muttering under his breath, “Fuck these guys, I’m takin’ this shit”?
These people live on the internet, so they think the real world is like a movie. The reality is that the people who are consistently given praise by the media and have the halo of altruism surrounding them are the most likely to transgress in that way. Like O.J. Simpson, Bill Cosby, Jimmy Savile, Jussie Smollett and Hillary Clinton.
Either Trump was told the documents were classified when they weren’t, or the FBI planted some classified shit, or Trump was stupid enough to think the media would look the other way…
Or…Trump already de-classified all of it, Biden is throwing this Hail Mary to win in 2024 on anything other than his merits, and Trump understands it’s all just political theater, and he’s letting Biden make this huge mistake so we can all enjoy the show with some popcorn and an old fashioned in hand. Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.