The Donald Trump Score Card

Trump was warned about the government documents issue.


Trump Was Warned Late Last Year of Potential Legal Peril Over Documents

 

Trump's people said it was twelve boxes of news clippings.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/16/trump-records-archives-clippings/

 

It calls into question how Trump was was spending his time during his presidency. Someone would have been cutting many newspaper articles and saving them in boxes.

That sounds like much more work than Trump did to try to properly store top-secret government documents.

 

https://thehill.com/policy/national...ain-declassification-of-mar-a-lago-documents/

 

For the moment, it appears that the special master is going to try to resolve the issue of what constitutes declassification, an issue Trump still doesn't want to address.

Judge Cannon didn't address it either, yet she used the unresolved issue to stop the DOJ from using the seized documents in a criminal investigation while someone else tries to figure it out.

 

https://thehill.com/policy/national...ain-declassification-of-mar-a-lago-documents/

 

It sounds like Trump's team is arguing that explaining Trump's declassification process won't come until later if and when he is indicted by the DOJ because doing so now would give away a defense he could use later after the indictment (assuming it even happens).

So the declassification issue won't be resolved until the DOJ indicts Trump, which it would have difficulty doing because Judge Cannon essentially ruled that the DOJ can't use the documents in a criminal case until after the declassification issue is resolved.

The documents are still property of the U.S. government, even if they had been declassified. The declassification issue has created a roadblock for the DOJ, at least in the mind of Judge Cannon whose ruling could be overturned by the 11th Circuit.

 

The act of Trump saying he declassified the documents but didn't go through any formal process could make him prone to more criminal charges stemming from a careless abuse of the declassification power that placed sources and other parties at risk in the name of him not wanting to go through what his attorneys call bureaucracy.

Trump could at some point say in a legal filing that he declassified the most sensitive of documents, such as the most secret nuclear weapons documents, without going through any government process and stored them in an unsecure place where nefarious elements could have stole them.

The use of that type of argument to try to protect himself from the current possible charges related to the three laws the DOJ says he may have violated seems to be just as risky for him.

For the moment, he's got a chicken vs. egg routine going where he says he doesn't have to reveal if he declassified them which (based on Cannon's ruling) stymies the DOJ from prosecuting him.

A possible better path the DOJ could have taken before the seizure would have been to ask Trump to make a formal statement about whether or not he had declassified the documents, although he could have refused to make such a formal statement. The fact that the DOJ apparently didn't give Trump a loophole (maybe a temporary one) to argue that him saying it now wouldn't be fair to him for his defense now that the DOJ has already seized the documents (that are supposedly Trump's property) and may decide to indict him later.

The closest the DOJ came to that type of approach was to request an affidavit that stated there weren't any more documents at Mar-a-Lago, which Trump got Bobb to sign. Trump will be off the hook to some extent with that maneuver since he didn't sign the affidavit. Bobb could flip later and say he told her to do so.

The DOJ may have assumed that it seemed so obvious that the documents were government property that it didn't expect someone like Judge Cannon to rule in the manner she did.

 

For all of their posturing they’re afraid to lie to a Federal Judge for fear of prosecution, imprisonment, and disbarment

 

Yet, with the help of Judge Cannon, they're implementing that fear of lying, at least temporarily, as a means of obstructing the DOJ from prosecuting Trump and his associates.

 

The DOJ needs to obtain a rultng from the 11th Circuit to stop the injunction issued by Judge Cannon.

The criminal investigation could then continue while Trump chases his own tail about whether or not he declassified.

 

Trump got his pick of special master. Now the special master has asked Trump's lawyers to explain how Trump came to declassify the documents in question which he has to examine for the court. Trump's lawyers just told this special master that they cannot answer, because they are saving their answer for Trump's indictment!

 

Trump picked the judge. Trump picked the special master. Now Trump cannot answer their questions. He is either stupid, desperate, or just making a mockery of our laws.

 

New footage confirms fake Trump elector spent hours inside Georgia elections office day it was breached - CNNPolitics

excerpt:

"A Republican county official in Georgia and operatives working with an attorney for former President Donald Trump spent hours inside a restricted area of the local elections office on the day voting systems there were breached, newly obtained surveillance video shows.

The video reveals for the first time what happened inside the Coffee County elections office on January 7, 2021, the same day its voting systems are known to have been compromised. Among those seen in the footage is Cathy Latham, a former GOP chairwoman of Coffee County who is under criminal investigation for posing as a fake elector in 2020.

CNN previously reported that Latham escorted operatives working with former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell through the front door of the elections office on January 7, 2021. The new footage appears to undercut previous claims by Latham that she was not “personally involved” in the breach."

 

Trump makes the funeral about him.


Trump Makes Queen's Funeral All About Him, Says He Would Have Had Better Seat Than Biden

excerpt:

“This is what’s happened to America in just two short years,” Trump, who wasn’t invited to the queen’s funeral, wrote on his social media platform with an image of Biden being seated.

“No respect! However, a good time for our President to get to know the leaders of certain Third World countries. If I were president, they wouldn’t have sat me back there — and our Country would be much different than it is right now!”

 

Guessing the strategy for the Trump guys is to not pay their attorneys after Trump doesn't pay them.