Even Fox & Friends is struggling with the classified document fiasco at Mar-a-Lago.
Steve Doocey confronted Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) about it on this morning’s show and managed to sound momentarily reasonable:
Continue reading “‘Why Did He Have All Of That Stuff At Mar-a-Lago?’”In a raid earlier this month, the FBI recovered dozens of classified documents at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and resort, months after Trump’s lawyers swore they’d turned everything over to the government. Federal prosecutors filed a startling photo of some of those documents in court Tuesday, and said they’d found evidence of a likely effort to obstruct their investigation into missing federal records.
Continue reading “Phew! Luckily, Trump Declassified All Those Documents The FBI Found, Trump Says”I’m getting a late start this morning because I was up quite late trying to make sense of the various facts, claims, allegations and more contained in the DOJ’s latest filing. And yes, the photo … When I first saw the photo across my Twitter feeds I thought: Oh this is someone showing a photo of what highly classified documents look like, with their stamped and color coded jackets. Then after seeing it a number of times it hit me: wait, that’s a crime scene photo of Trump’s haul! Right down to the tacky carpet.
Our team will keep you up to speed on the details but there are a few points that caught my attention last night.
Continue reading “The Photo, The Photo …”Go read the Justice Department’s filing or our summary of it here or just look at this darn photo, then consider this:
Continue reading “Peak Trumpism”A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
A late night for Justice Department reporters awaiting the government’s filing in the one of the two cases arising from the Mar-a-Lago raid. It finally came in around 11:30 p.m. ET, and packed a bit more punch than I had expected.
In particular, it tucked a little hand grenade down deep in the filing. The final exhibit at the bottom of an attachment to the filing is a photo of documents mark classified that the FBI allegedly found, strewn across the floor at Mar-a-Lago. The Justice Department described it as “redacted FBI photograph of certain documents and classified cover sheets recovered from a container in the ’45 office.’”
We’ll get to some of the other revelations by the Justice Department in a moment, but first …
Politico: “The 36-page filing was the department’s most detailed account yet of its evidence of obstruction of justice, raising concerns that Trump and his attorneys sought to mislead investigators about the sincerity and thoroughness of their effort to identify and return highly sensitive records to the government.”
NYT: “The filing on Tuesday made clear that prosecutors are now unmistakably focused on the possibility that Mr. Trump and those around him took criminal steps to obstruct their investigation.”
WaPo: “The filing traces the extraordinary saga of government officials’ repeated efforts to recover sensitive national security papers from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and club, centered on a storage room where prosecutors came to suspect that ‘government records were likely concealed and removed … and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.’”
AP: “The filing offers yet another indication of the sheer volume of classified records retrieved from Mar-a-Lago. It shows how investigators conducting a criminal probe have focused not just on why the records were improperly stored there, but also on the question of whether the Trump team intentionally misled them about the continued, and unlawful, presence of the top secret documents.”
The DOJ filing breaks the federal investigation into two main thrusts:
As to thrust 1, the government’s most compelling evidence is of course actually finding classified material at Mar-a-Lago during the FBI’s search, as demonstrated by that damning photo. But there was also the earlier retrieval of the 15 boxes of documents that included some classified material.
As to Thrust 2 (obstruction), the Justice Department told the court there was “likely” an effort to conceal classified documents at Mar-a-Lago in defiance of a grand jury subpoena:
The government also developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.
That the FBI, in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many documents with classification markings as the ‘diligent search’ that the former President’s counsel and other representatives had weeks to perform calls into serious question the representations made in the June 3 certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter.
We finally got to see the certification by Trump’s lawyer that all of the government records responsive to the grand jury subpoena had been turned over, which of course turned out not to be true:
Here’s how the Washington Post put it:
In parts of the filing, using only their job descriptions, prosecutors paint Trump’s lawyer, Evan Corcoran, and custodian of records, Christina Bobb, as so uncooperative as to lead agents to suspect the Trump team might be obstructing the investigation.
The filing, for instance, says that when FBI agents and Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterintelligence and export control section at the Justice Department, met with Trump’s two representatives in early June, “the former President’s counsel explicitly prohibited government personnel from opening or looking inside any of the boxes that remained in the storage room, giving no opportunity for the government to confirm that no documents with classification markings remained.”
For this filing, the Justice Department took the relatively unusual step of asking the federal judge overseeing the Washington DC grand jury investigating the matter to allow the release of some grand jury information from the probe:
The Justice Department chided the Trump legal team for being too slow to move for a special master. But the time Trump filed his request, the DOJ filter team had already weeded out the materials from the raid that investigators were not supposed to see, and investigators had reviewed all of the remaining documents from the search. As DOJ put it:
The need for promptness when a party seeks appointment of a special master is obvious: the government may begin reviewing materials as soon as they are seized, and a delay of even two weeks may well mean—as it does here—that the government has reviewed all of the seized materials by the time relief is sought.
The RNC is declining to pay for Trump’s legal fees incurred from the Mar-a-Lago raid.
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There’s been quite a lot of coverage in recent weeks of Republican anti-abortion diehards running away from their positions in light of the Dobbs backlash. There’s been particular attention to Arizona senate candidate Blake Masters who scrubbed the portion of his site focused on abortion. But until today I hadn’t seen just how total a change he now claims to embrace all while still claiming not to have changed his position at all.
Continue reading “Masters Moonwalking Away from Anti-Abortion Extremism”As my colleague Kaila Philo reported earlier today, Secret Service Assistant Director Tony Ornato retired from the agency this week, leaving plenty of unanswered questions in his wake. The DHS inspector general’s office had reportedly been trying to get him to sit for an interview about matters related to the missing texts scandal; it’s unclear, now, whether that will happen.
There are two layers to recent intrigue surrounding Ornato. His role in whatever tf was going on with the missing Secret Service texts is, of course, one. But secondly, Ornato’s standing as a character of interest to the Jan. 6 committee increased 10-fold after Cassidy Hutchinson gave astonishing public testimony earlier this summer.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Reminder Of Ornato’s Role In Pushing Pence To Leave Capitol On Jan 6”Mikhail Gorbachev, the final leader of the Soviet Union, who presided over its failed reform and subsequent collapse, has died at the age of 91. An immensely, immensely consequential life.
TPM Reader LS from Georgia …
Continue reading “Still Waiting”Just to let you know I called Jon Ossoff’s office (Atlanta and DC), and got through. I guess nothing has changed. They said he supports The Women’s Health Protection Act, but won’t say what he would do regarding the filibuster. I explained I had 2 daughters with essentially no rights in Georgia. That we are unlikely to ever have 60 votes. But you know they are just taking the message.
U.S. Secret Service Assistant Director Anthony “Tony” Ornato left the Secret Service on Monday.
Continue reading “Top Secret Service Official At Center Of Hutchinson’s Testimony Leaves Agency”
