Prosecutors Interviewing Witnesses Who Knew Trump Was Hoarding Documents

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This article claiming that a grand jury in DC might vote on Espionage Act charges against Trump as soon as today, from a reporter who hasn’t focused closely on the stolen documents case, has gotten far more attention than this WaPo story, saying that the bulk of charges will be filed against Trump in Florida.

The preference for the former over the latter likely stems from the fact that it tells people what they want to hear.

But you should treat the WaPo story, from Spencer Hsu and three others, including Mar-a-Lago scribe Josh Dawsey, as more reliable. Hsu is a very cautious journalist; he’s highly unlikely to get ahead of himself on the report that the bulk of charges will be in Florida, which conflicts with the Indy claim. Plus, WaPo uses none of the caveats that Feinberg uses. WaPo’s story also matches what we know about venue for the suspected crimes.

You should treat the WaPo story as more credible, most of all, because WaPo’s description of Taylor Budowich’s testimony yesterday that makes it clear the grand jury in Florida is considering Espionage Act charges.

As it describes, Budowich withheld a statement Trump wanted to release last year, claiming he had returned all documents.

Prosecutors were at least partially interested in Budowich because of his role in an episode involving Trump in early 2022, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because grand jury proceedings are secret. After sending boxes of materials from his Mar-a-Lago home and private club to the National Archives and Records Administration, which catalogues and preserves presidential records, Trump drafted a lengthy statement saying he had given “everything” back to the federal government, The Washington Post has reported.

But Budowich did not release Trump’s statement after consulting with lawyers and advisers for the former president, people familiar with the episode said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations. At least some of Trump’s advisers did not believe he had returned “everything” at the time, the people said, even though the archives had been asking for months for Trump to give back any government material in his possession, as required by federal law.

Several days later, Trump issued a different statement that did not include the claim that everything had been returned.

Around the same time, a Trump lawyer rebuffed the former president’s request to tell the archives he had returned everything, The Post has reported, because the lawyer was not sure such an assertion was true.

Prosecutors have reviewed a draft of Trump’s statement, which contains at least one tangent about Germany and an overseas oil pipeline, the people familiar with the matter said. Multiple witnesses have been questioned by prosecutors about the statement, the people said, and asked whether Trump ever asked them to lie or mislead anyone about whether he continued to maintain classified information in his possession. [my emphasis]

The discussion over the statement — which WaPo suggests, with their link to their earlier report, included Alex Cannon — suggests multiple people at Mar-a-Lago believed he was hoarding documents. WaPo focuses on the way Trump’s people edited out his claim that he had returned all the documents. That statement wouldn’t present the same legal jeopardy as his later claim, issued via Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, to have complied with a subpoena. But it would have ceded NARA’s claim to any remaining documents.

The process of having this discussion left a paper trail for prosecutors to show a more generalized awareness that Trump retained documents — one that may fill in gaps if there is surveillance footage from the “dress rehearsal” missing.

All those people (many of whom would also be key witnesses in Jack Smith’s investigation of Trump’s fundraising fraud) are now on the hook to come clean about their knowledge or go down with Trump. Given the target notice, they may be especially motivated to do so in coming weeks.

I’m interested, though, in WaPo’s mention of the reference to what sounds like the Nord Stream pipeline. In what was likely the statement that Trump did release, he raised the imminent invasion of Russia and claimed credit for preventing any such invasion while he was President.

Because Trump doesn’t have a filter, and because Trump had just sorted through which documents he wanted to retain, any mention of something specific like the Nord Stream may match documents that he held onto. And that would, in addition, tie to some pretty interesting motives, which prosecutors could use at a hypothetical trial.

This Indictment Will Likely Come Too Early for Trump to Consolidate the Party

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After Trump propagandaist John Solomon published that Trump had been told he was a target of the Espionage Act investigation that has targeted him since last August, Trump did a post on his failing social media site. I’ve edited it down to the key bits:

Trump’s first response to the first public confirmation that he will soon be charged was not, as it turned out, to bellow, “Lock him up!” or even reconsider his past obstruction, but instead demand that the insurrectionists in Congress do something.

His first response was to demand that Republicans turn their focus — as they have for much of the last five years — on defending him at all costs, to the detriment of anything that better serves their interests (to say nothing of the interests of their constituents).

I’m not surprised. At some point, I will finally write a post describing how brilliantly Trump used the Russian investigation — assisted by a great deal of Russian disinformation — to successfully demand GOP loyalty to him over country. In the end, the Russian investigation was a tremendous tool Trump used to accrue power, all the while doing grave damage to the US.

His response to the public report he’ll soon be indicted was to attempt to do the same thing: make his own legal woes those of the entire GOP.

But this indictment — if it indeed gets filed in the next two weeks or so — may come too early for Trump.

That’s because, as I laid out here, there’s still plenty of time in the GOP primary for other Republicans to take advantage of Trump’s legal woes. Republicans seem to be sensing this opportunity. Chris Christie kicked off his undoubtedly doomed presidential race by focusing on Trump’s epic corruption. Mike Pence kicked off his equally doomed presidential run by emphasizing that he did his duty on January 6, unlike Trump (the presence of his brother Greg at the event undermined that message, because even after Trump almost got both he and the Vice President killed, Greg still challenged the election and voted against impeaching Trump). Asa Hutchinson called on Trump to step aside, noting he may be charged with Espionage [Act violations].

The point is not that these men will win the election. It’s that they’re using their candidacy to oppose Trump at a time when Christie and Pence and Hutchinson can anticipate that Jack Smith will soon give each a lot of material to work with. Many — not most, but many — Republicans are looking for permission to break with Trump and the timing of a potential indictment and the primary may give a way to do it.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s success at giving Kevin McCarthy a way out of the hostage situation he was forced to create just before the US credit rating was affected is having a remarkable effect on the House GOP.

Insurrectionists in Congress, who briefly considered trying to replace McCarthy, seem to have realized they don’t have the votes, and so have been trying to do something — anything — to look like they are tough. But it has only made them, and Republicans, look more ridiculous.

There are increasing reports that less radical Republicans want nothing to do with this chaos.

Greg Sargent wrote up what he describes as Biden’s deliberate attempt to marginalize the MAGAts, which is a good way of understanding it.

[I]n promising to restore “the soul of the nation” in the face of this threat, Biden has continually distinguished between MAGA Republicans and more conventional ones. This approach has been criticized by those of us who see much of the GOP as extreme and dangerous — after all, many elected Republicans helped whitewash Trump’s insurrection — and think Biden’s characterization of non-MAGA Republicans plays down that broader threat.

But Biden’s reading served him well in the debt limit standoff. Contrary to much criticism, Bidenworld believes that refusing to negotiate at the outset was key: It forced Republicans to offer their own budget, which created an opening to attack the savage spending cuts in it.

Notably, Biden and other Democrats relentlessly characterized those cuts as destructive and dangerous in the MAGA vein. Bidenworld did believe that some MAGA Republicans were willing to default and force global economic cataclysm to harm the president’s reelection, a senior Biden adviser tells me, but also that many non-MAGA Republicans ultimately could be induced not to go that far.

There’s no guarantee it’ll work. There’s no way to prevent some of the damage that Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, and James Comer intend to do.

But there’s always the threat that if ten Republicans decide they’ve had enough of this chaos, it creates the opportunity for a Fred Upton or similar to come in to lead a House that will function as a legislative body again.

If Trump weren’t indicted until September or October — still a realistic timeline for January 6, particularly if interim charges must occur first — Trump might have had an opportunity to seal the GOP primary and force the GOP to defend whatever crimes he gets charged with, to own and normalize those crimes as their own, as the GOP has chosen to do for the past six years.

But at the moment, there are hints of a mood change, one in which at least a critical handful of Republicans will choose against the chaos they’ve been gripped by for six years.

Update: Added the Hutchinson tweet. h/t.

Dry Run: The Filing Room Came to Trump

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Given the reports that former Trump spox Taylor Budowich was questioned by the head of counterintelligence Jay Bratt before a Florida grand jury today, it’s worth revisiting the public statement included in the August 2022 search affidavit to search Mar-a-Lago (my emphasis).

He released this statement after NARA’s discovery of classified documents was made public.

He specifically denied that “the President of the United States, was working in a filing room.”

This earlier response to the NARA appears to be the “dry run” that Beryl Howell invoked in her opinion finding a crime-fraud exception for Evan Corcoran’s interactions with Trump in advance of Trump’s defiance of the May 11 subpoena.

When the chief US judge Beryl Howell forced Corcoran to testify to a grand jury, she opined in a 86-page legal memo that she believed when Trump went through boxes to give materials back to the National Archives last year, it was “apparently a dress rehearsal” for the subpoena.

The Post attributed the “dress rehearsal” line to officials, though it was in Howell’s legal opinion that was reported in March.

We also know that DOJ obtained 5 months of surveillance footage, going back to 8 days before Trump returned these classified documents.

So it may well be that much of what has happened since has involved an attempt to hide that, yes, Trump really was working in a filing room (or at the very least, a filing room came to him).

Update: Hugo Lowell is the first major person covering this stuff to confirm that Trump was told he’s a target. This will all solidify in days ahead. For the moment I’m interested in the timing. He would have been told last week he was a target, and then NYT published their rebuttal of his work, and then Trump’s lawyers either went and did a standard pitch or spewed a conspiracy theory (which John Solomon is pushing).

In other words, what we say in the last 4 days is a response to the target notification.

NYT’s Pre-DOJ Meeting Attempted Rebuttal

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According to multiple outlets, the Trump’s lawyers met with DOJ the other day in part to lodge claims about prosecutorial abuses.

Robert Costa, who first broke this meeting, reported that Trump’s lawyers complained that Jack Smith “overstepped” in the way he dealt with attorney-client privilege.

The NYT didn’t describe what their complaint at the meeting was, but did describe a more detailed version of the letter, asking for a meeting with Merrick Garland, that Trump released as a PR stunt. It talked about strong-arming defense attorneys.

The letter to Mr. Garland was an abbreviated version of a longer one that contained a more detailed account of the concerns by Mr. Trump’s lawyers, according to two people familiar with the matter. Those included the ways in which grand juries have been used in the special counsel’s investigations and attempts to strong-arm defense lawyers involved in the cases, the people said.

Hugo Lowell described that Trump’s lawyers raised concerns about prosecutorial misconduct and mentioned a particular incident that Trump’s lawyers had been complaining about for weeks.

Trump’s lawyers made a general case as to why Trump should not be charged in the Mar-a-Lago documents case and suggested that some prosecutors working under special counsel Jack Smith engaged in what they considered prosecutorial misconduct, the people said.

The exact allegations are not clear but Trump’s lawyers for weeks have complained privately that Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterintelligence and espionage section at the justice department, once sought to induce a witness into confirming something they declined to, one of the people said. [my emphasis]

That’s why I’m interested in this story the NYT published last week, which provided dramatic details of a recording Evan Corcoran made memorializing the advice he had given Trump.

In complete sentences and a narrative tone that sounded as if it had been ripped from a novel, Mr. Corcoran recounted in detail a nearly monthlong period of the documents investigation, according to two people familiar with the matter.

CNN first reported on how detailed these notes were on May 22.

One source described Corcoran’s notes as “overly detailed.” Another source close to Trump’s legal team said that some of them were surprised about the level of detail in Corcoran’s notes. That source said multiple sets of notes were handed over to prosecutors and that they were significantly redacted to shield Corcoran’s legal opinions in the notes from investigators.

On May 30, more than a week after CNN’s original scoop, in a story that also discussed the notes, Hugo Lowell reported that Evan Corcoran had been “waved off” searching anywhere besides the storage room.

Donald Trump’s lawyer tasked with searching for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after the justice department issued a subpoena told associates that he was waved off from searching the former president’s office, where the FBI later found the most sensitive materials anywhere on the property.

The lawyer, Evan Corcoran, recounted that several Trump aides had told him to search the storage room because that was where all the materials that had been brought from the White House at the end of Trump’s presidency ended up being deposited.

[snip]

Corcoran also memorialized how he told Trump he could not retain any classified documents at Mar-a-Lago when Trump asked what he was allowed to keep, as well as when he took breaks during the search by walking out to the pool deck nearby, and therefore leaving the storage room unattended. [my emphasis]

Then, on June 3, the weekend before this DOJ meeting (though presumably after it was scheduled), NYT published the dramatization of Corcoran’s notes, what with the description of his full sentences.

Here’s how they rationalize not giving credit to CNN or Lowell for their earlier coverage.

Mr. Corcoran’s notes, which have not been previously described in such detail, will likely play a central role as Mr. Smith and his team move toward concluding their investigation and turn to the question of whether to bring charges against Mr. Trump.

That the NYT didn’t credit another reporter is par the course. What’s novel, here, is how clearly they (or, presumably, their sources) seem to be attempting to rebut Lowell’s report that Corcoran was waved off.

The notes in the recording do not suggest that Mr. Corcoran was waved away from searching anywhere other than the storage room, the people familiar with them said. But they also indicate that no one at Mar-a-Lago — including Mr. Trump — spoke up to tell him that he should look elsewhere. [my emphasis]

Only, NYT didn’t rebut Lowell’s reporting. He was reporting on what Corcoran told other people, not what he recorded in his voice memo. Given how thoroughly Jack Smith has blanketed Mar-a-Lago with subpoenas, those other people are likely to have been subpoenaed as well.

Obtaining witness testimony that conflicts with a written record is the kind of thing that might lead a prosecutor like Jay Bratt to challenge a witness — especially if he were trying to preserve the sterling value of a lawyer testifying against his client. If a prosecutor has witnesses on the record regarding such a topic, it’d be a perfectly justifiable challenge.

Corcoran is not the only attorney witness whose testimony seems to differ from what he later told others. Tim Parlatore, after all, seems to believe that Boris Ephsteyn was less cooperative on searches than he told the grand jury.

If I were a Trump lawyer, I’d worry more about how such discrepancies might put me at risk of being charged right along with Trump than claiming it’s a sign of prosecutorial abuse.

The Dog Drained My Pool to Try to Destroy Surveillance Video

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CNN has a hilarious story about how Trump’s head of maintenance, whom NYT identified as Carlos Deoliveira, drained the pool at Mar-a-Lago in October and in the process flooded the room where surveillance footage is kept.

An employee at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence drained the resort’s swimming pool last October and ended up flooding a room where computer servers containing surveillance video logs were kept, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

[snip]

Prosecutors have heard testimony that the IT equipment in the room was not damaged in the flood, according to one source.

In addition to an interview, DOJ has seized his phone.

The maintenance worker more recently spoke to investigators in an interview, and his phone has been seized, some of the sources now tell CNN.

The initial story about Deoliveira, a story led by Devlin Barrett and Josh Dawsey, featured on-the-record comments from his Trump-paid lawyer and describes that he just offered to help without knowing what Nauta was moving.

John Irving, a lawyer representing one of the two employees who moved the boxes, said the worker did not know what was in them and was only trying to help Trump valet Walt Nauta, who was using a dolly or hand truck to move a number of boxes.

“He was seen on Mar-a-Lago security video helping Walt Nauta move boxes into a storage area on June 2, 2022. My client saw Mr. Nauta moving the boxes and volunteered to help him,” Irving said. The next day, he added, the employee helped Nauta pack an SUV “when former president Trump left for Bedminster for the summer.”

At first, NYT simply matched that story, with the same exculpatory explanation for Deoliveira’s involvement. But their follow-up includes details that explain why the flooded server room would be so suspect: Deoliveira reportedly called the IT consultant who manages surveillance footage at Mar-a-Lago after DOJ sent a subpoena for the surveillance footage.

Two weeks ago, the latest of these employees, an information technology worker named Yuscil Taveras, appeared before a grand jury in Washington, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Taveras was asked questions about his dealings with two other Trump employees: Walt Nauta, a longtime aide to Mr. Trump who served as one of his valets in the White House, and Carlos Deoliveira, described by one person familiar with the events as the head of maintenance at Mar-a-Lago.

Phone records show that Mr. Deoliveira called Mr. Taveras last summer, and prosecutors wanted to know why. The call caught the government’s attention because it was placed shortly after prosecutors issued a subpoena to Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, demanding the footage from the surveillance camera near the storage room.

The call also occurred just weeks after Mr. Deoliveira helped Mr. Nauta move boxes of documents into the storage room — the same room that Mr. Deoliveira at one point fitted with a lock.

[snip]

They asked Mr. Taveras an open-ended question about if anyone had queried him about whether footage from the surveillance system could be deleted.

The NYT follow-up describes that all three of these men — the valet, the maintenance guy, and the IT consultant — are being represented by Trump paid lawyers. The latter two are long-term Trump employees. So there’s a temptation to imagine that if there are cahoots to be had, they’re all in it together.

But if surveillance footage got altered via one means to hide stuff that happened before June 3, one would assume that same means would be available after June 3. So if the attempt to flood the server room were an attempt to destroy surveillance footage, it may be an attempt to hide something else.

That’s one of a number of potential explanations for the reports of a Florida grand jury: that there’s a separate suspected crime the venue of which is entirely there.

Alternately, DOJ could have decided that to charge Espionage Act crimes, it is best to do it in Florida — as I laid out here.

But there’s another question that may be just as important as the evidence to support the charges, and may elicit quite a debate within DOJ: venue. The easiest way to overcome all the difficulties with charging a former President with 793 would be to charge his retention of documents after the time when:

  1. The Archives had explained that retaining them was unlawful under the Presidential Records Act
  2. Both the Archives and DOJ had asked for them back
  3. Jay Bratt had informed him (through Evan Corcoran) that they were being stored improperly

That is, if he were to charge 793, Smith would likely charge for actions trump took between May and August of last year, at Mar-a-Lago. So (while some smart lawyers disagree) there would be at least a fair argument that it would have to be charged in SDFL.

Ideally any charges against a former President would be strong enough to convince a South Florida jury, but the possibility of Aileen Cannon presiding over such a trial would be daunting. Plus, judges in DC have far more experience dealing with cases involving classified information than most other districts other than EDVA.

Though that wouldn’t necessarily take new witnesses in Florida. It could require no more than an FBI agent to present the evidence obtained in DC.

Hopefully, we’ll learn soon enough.

Tim Parlatore Quit After Trump Lawyers Couldn’t Find the Iran Document

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Tim Parlatore’s decision to quit the Trump team — and the reports on the infighting on Trump’s legal team that followed shortly thereafter — sure look a lot different in light of CNN’s report, from a team that includes the journalist to whom Parlatore has twice given big scoops, Paula Reid, that Trump’s lawyers haven’t been able to find an Iran document Trump got caught on tape claiming to have at Bedminster.

Attorneys for Donald Trump turned over material in mid-March in response to a federal subpoena related to a classified US military document described by the former president on tape in 2021 but were unable to find the document itself, two sources tell CNN.

[snip]

Prosecutors sought “any and all” documents and materials related to Mark Milley, Trump’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Iran, including maps or invasion plans, the sources say. A similar subpoena was sent to at least one other attendee of the meeting, another source tells CNN.

The sources say prosecutors made clear to Trump’s attorneys after issuing the subpoena that they specifically wanted the Iran document he talked about on tape as well as any material referencing classified information – like meeting notes, audio recordings or copies of the document – that may still be Trump’s possession.

Parlatore, remember, is the guy who oversaw searches in November and December of Trump’s other properties. He then appeared before the grand jury to attest to the thoroughness of the searches, effectively playing the same role that Christina Bobb had last summer. Bobb, an OAN host, was smart enough to include caveats before she did that.

According to Hugo Lowell’s account of the clusterfuck legal team, Parlatore didn’t similarly protect himself. He told the grand jury that there were no impediments to his searches and then brought a transcript back to the team to make clear what he had said.

In fact, the legal team is said to be confident that Parlatore will not flip on Trump after he told the grand jury hearing evidence in the case last year that Trump gave him free rein to search for any remaining documents at his properties last year, according to a transcript of his testimony.

Trump’s team seems to be confident that Parlatore won’t revise that story because he’s already on the hook for perjury for it.

In mid-March, in the same time period Trump’s lawyers would have first learned of the recording Trump made, Parlatore gave my favorite quote of any regarding Boris Ephsteyn: that the rest of Trump’s lawyers would be okay so long as Ephsteyn was not named a target (he didn’t say, in which investigation).

“Boris has access to information and a network that is useful to us,” said one of the team’s lawyers, Timothy Parlatore, whom Mr. Epshteyn hired. “It’s good to have someone who’s a lawyer who is also inside the palace gates.”

Mr. Parlatore suggested that he was not worried that Mr. Epshteyn, like a substantial number of other Trump lawyers, had become at least tangentially embroiled in some of the same investigations on which he was helping to defend Mr. Trump.

“Absent any solid indication that Boris is a target here, I don’t think it affects us,” Mr. Parlatore said.

That would also have been around the time that the subpoena — the one that Trump’s lawyers ultimately couldn’t completely fulfil because they couldn’t find the Iran document — would have made the past searches Parlatore vouched for, the searches he reportedly told a grand jury he had unfettered access to conduct, seem incomplete.

Even as Parlatore was publicly hailing the value of Boris, he was staging an attempted intervention, to get him removed as a gatekeeper to Trump.

Parlatore and Trusty’s interpersonal conflicts with Epshteyn reached new levels as they grew increasingly annoyed at what they considered their inability to directly consult Trump without having to go through Epshteyn.

The pair chafed that when they spoke to Trump on the phone, Epshteyn was typically also on the line. At other times, they sniped that Epshteyn would give overly rosy outlooks to Trump and, in March, travelled to Mar-a-Lago to seek Trump’s permission to exclude him from future deliberations.

It was not clear whether the issue was actually resolved. Parlatore came away from the meeting content that he no longer needed to speak to Epshteyn. However, Epshteyn remained Trump’s in-house counsel and the legal team’s liaison with the Trump 2024 campaign.

Around that time, Parlatore and Trusty also started withholding information from Corcoran because they worried that Corcoran was too close to Epshteyn and was briefing him behind their backs.

Just over a month after this attempt to get Boris removed as gatekeeper, Boris spent two days interviewing with prosecutors (but not appearing before the grand jury, the kind of thing someone might do if he were trying to stave off a target letter).

In the same period, Jack Smith subpoenaed Trump Organization for details of his business deals, including the golf deal with the Saudis. He also kept pursuing gaps in the surveillance footage (gaps the details of which Parlatore may know, but the public does not).

And then, after attempting to stage an intervention to get Boris removed, Parlatore quit himself. Shortly after, he provided a public story (to Paula Reid) that seems to dramatically conflict with his grand jury testimony as described by Lowell, specifically citing Boris’ interference with a search of Bedminster.

Boris Epshteyn [] had really done everything he could to try to block us [the lawyers], to prevent us from doing what we could to defend the President, and ultimately it got to a point where — it’s difficult enough fighting against DOJ and, in this case, Special Counsel, but when you also have people within the tent that are also trying to undermine you, block you, and really make it so that I can’t do what I know that I know that I need to do as a lawyer, and when I’m getting in the fights like that, that’s detracting from what is necessary to defend the client and ultimately was not in the client’s best interest, so I made the decision to withdraw.

[snip]

He served as kind of a filter to prevent us from getting information to the client and getting information from the client. In my opinion, he was not very honest with us or with the client on certain things. There were certain things — like the searches that he had attempted to interfere with, and then more recently, as we’re coming down to the end of this investigation where Jack Smith and ultimately Merrick Garland is going to make a decision as to what to do – as we put together our defense strategy to help educate Merrick Garland as to how best to handle this matter, he was preventing us from engaging in that strategy. [my emphasis]

All that may have been an effort to be invited to clarify his testimony.

It didn’t come. As of last Tuesday, Jack Smith had shown no interest in this apparently revised story.

Parlatore noted that Smith’s investigators have not yet reached out to him as of Tuesday night.

Or Parlatore may have changed his tune too late for his own good. NBC reports that this grand jury, which had been on a month-long hiatus, is set to meet again this week.

The notion that four or five real lawyers have tolerated — for months — having a guy whose phone had already been seized by the prosecutor investigating their client to serve as a gatekeeper between them and their client is nuts. Crazier still is that you’d put your career on the line even after that guy had obstructed your effort to do your work diligently.

In March, DOJ Asked Trump for the Iran Document; In April, DOJ Asked for His Saudi Business Records

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Remember how I responded to CNN’s scoop that DOJ had recordings of Trump bragging about a document describing a plan to attack Iran that he acknowledged remained classified?

I suggested that if DOJ knew he had the document in July 2021, but didn’t find it in the documents returned in January 2022 or June 2022 or August 2022, then we’d have problems.

If it is, then it would be a document that Trump transported back and forth from Florida — something that would make it easier for DOJ to charge this in DC instead of SDFL.

If it’s something DOJ didn’t obtain in the search, but also didn’t obtain among the documents Trump returned in either January or June 2022, then … then we have problems. If this is among the documents that DOJ thinks Trump didn’t return, then we have problems, especially given Jack Smith’s focus on Trump’s LIV golf deal, because this is the kind of document that the Saudis would pay billions of dollars for.

CNN has a follow-up, revealing that after Margo Martin was asked about the recording in her March grand jury appearance, DOJ subpoenaed Trump for the document.

His lawyers couldn’t find it.

Attorneys for Donald Trump turned over material in mid-March in response to a federal subpoena related to a classified US military document described by the former president on tape in 2021 but were unable to find the document itself, two sources tell CNN.

[snip]

Prosecutors sought “any and all” documents and materials related to Mark Milley, Trump’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Iran, including maps or invasion plans, the sources say. A similar subpoena was sent to at least one other attendee of the meeting, another source tells CNN.

The sources say prosecutors made clear to Trump’s attorneys after issuing the subpoena that they specifically wanted the Iran document he talked about on tape as well as any material referencing classified information – like meeting notes, audio recordings or copies of the document – that may still be Trump’s possession.

That was in March.

In April, DOJ asked Trump for records on — among other things — his business ties to the Saudis.

The Trump Organization swore off any foreign deals while he was in the White House, and the only such deal Mr. Trump is known to have made since then was with a Saudi-based real estate company to license its name to a housing, hotel and golf complex that will be built in Oman. He struck that deal last fall just before announcing his third presidential campaign.

The push by Mr. Smith’s prosecutors to gain insight into the former president’s foreign business was part of a subpoena — previously reported by The New York Times — that was sent to the Trump Organization and sought records related to Mr. Trump’s dealings with a Saudi-backed golf venture known as LIV Golf, which is holding tournaments at some of his golf clubs. (Mr. Trump’s arrangement with LIV Golf was reached well after he removed documents from the White House.)

Collectively, the subpoena’s demand for records related to the golf venture and other foreign ventures since 2017 suggests that Mr. Smith is exploring whether there is any connection between Mr. Trump’s deal-making abroad and the classified documents he took with him when he left office.

In March, DOJ asked for this Iran document Trump boasted on tape of having at Bedminster in July 2021, but his lawyers couldn’t find it.

In April, DOJ asked for records describing how and when he made a deal to host Saudi golf tournaments, and for how much.

In May, DOJ got Trump’s Chief Operating Officer to explain what he knew about gaps in the five months of surveillance footage Trump Organization turned over.

Lordy, There Are Tapes [of Trump Acknowledging He Had Stolen Classified Documents]!

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CNN has a blockbuster report about a recording, taken in conjunction with Mark Meadows’ memoir, capturing Trump claiming that he had a document planning an attack on Iran that he wished he could share, but could not, because it was classified.

The July 2021 meeting was held at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, with two people working on the autobiography of Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows as well as aides employed by the former president, including communications specialist Margo Martin. The attendees, sources said, did not have security clearances that would allow them access to classified information. Meadows didn’t attend the meeting, sources said.

Meadows’ autobiography includes an account of what appears to be the same meeting, during which Trump “recalls a four-page report typed up by (Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Mark Milley himself. It contained the general’s own plan to attack Iran, deploying massive numbers of troops, something he urged President Trump to do more than once during his presidency.”

The document Trump references was not produced by Milley, CNN was told.

[snip]

The meeting in which Trump discussed the Iran document with others happened shortly after The New Yorker published a story by Susan Glasser detailing how, in the final days of Trump’s presidency, Milley instructed the Joint Chiefs to ensure Trump issued no illegal orders and that he be informed if there was any concern. The story infuriated Trump.

Glasser reported that in the months following the election, Milley repeatedly argued against striking Iran and was concerned Trump “might set in motion a full-scale conflict that was not justified.” Milley and others talked Trump out of taking such a drastic action, according to the New Yorker story.

On the recording and in response to the story, Trump brings up the document, which he says came from Milley. Trump told those in the room that if he could show it to people, it would undermine what Milley was saying, the sources said. One source says Trump refers to the document as if it is in front of him.

Several sources say the recording captures the sound of paper rustling, as if Trump was waving the document around, though is not clear if it was the actual Iran document.

This is clearly an elaboration of what WaPo reported (as evidence of obstruction!) here, which I wrote about here. It is one of two documents — the other is a map — persistently described as something prosecutors asked about because Trump discussed sharing it with others.

The meeting was in Bedminster, not Mar-a-Lago.

One reason witnesses would be asked about it is to find out if Trump really had the document in front of him.

Let me explain how I think it relates (WaPo’s conceit notwithstanding) to potential Espionage Act or 18 USC 2071 charges.

First, it’s certainly possible this is one of the documents pertaining to Iran that WaPo has reported were among the ones obtained in the search in August 2022.

If it is, then it would be a document that Trump transported back and forth from Florida — something that would make it easier for DOJ to charge this in DC instead of SDFL.

If it’s something DOJ didn’t obtain in the search, but also didn’t obtain among the documents Trump returned in either January or June 2022, then … then we have problems. If this is among the documents that DOJ thinks Trump didn’t return, then we have problems, especially given Jack Smith’s focus on Trump’s LIV golf deal, because this is the kind of document that the Saudis would pay billions of dollars for.

Weeks ago, CNN also reported that Smith had asked NARA for 16 documents about declassification decisions. Few have considered the possibility those documents relate to specific documents that Trump still retained — though if there are any Russian investigations among those Trump retained at least until January 2022, then there surely would be. The same could be true here.

The document is, as CNN reports, evidence that Trump knew he had stolen classified documents.

Importantly, though, it’s also evidence about motive. No matter what reason Trump originally stole this document, this incident shows how Trump was exploiting it: To prove a critic wrong.

It’s precisely the same reason why Trump spent his last days attempting to declassify all the Russian investigation documents: revenge. It’s the most Trump motive ever.

But it also goes a long way to prove one of the more serious crimes listed in the warrant authorizing the search last August.

As I laid out in August, the elements of a straight up 18 USC 793 offense are:

  • Did the defendant, without authorization, have possession of, access to, or control over a document that was National Defense Information?
  • Did the document in question relate to the national defense?
  • Did the defendant have reason to believe the information could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation?
  • Did the defendant retain the above material and fail to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it?
  • Did he keep this document willfully?

All of Trump’s behavior here fulfils these elements of offense. The document could be heard rustling on the recording, and several witnesses can describe whether he really had it. The document pertained to an attack on Iran, quintessentially a matter of national defense. Trump exhibited awareness that he couldn’t share it, because it was classified. And Trump had it, at least in part, to avenge what he perceived as a slight by Milley.

The one caveat — one made by Charlie Savage on Twitter — is the bolded bullet. DOJ had not yet subpoenaed this document. If he wasn’t caught in possession in of this document, it would serve only as evidence of 18 USC 2071 — the law prohibiting taking classified documents that disqualifies someone from holding federal office. Though if he ever did share it with people, it could exposure him to more serious levels of the Espionage Act.

All trials are about prosecutors telling stories.

This incident is a story so good that Trump tried to tell it himself, and in the process got recorded admitting he had stolen classified documents. And that’s why prosecutors asked a bunch of witnesses about it.

Update: Hugo Lowell’s version of this includes important details (the NYT also got several of these):

  1. The meeting in question was in July 2021.
  2. The recording came from Margo Martin, whose devices prosecutors obtained and imaged.
  3. The actual document in question predates Mark Milley’s tenure as CJS.
  4. Trump’s lawyers claim a document matching this description was among those returned to the Archives.
  5. Prosecutors have shown the actual document to grand jury witnesses.

All GOP Horserace Analysis Is Useless without Consideration of Possible Indictments

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The NYT did a 3-byline 1,700-word story describing how the number of minor Republican candidates joining the race serves Trump’s purpose.

Its analysis of the numbers and Ron DeSantis’ early failures isn’t bad. But because it is silent about how the expanding field might play in the likelihood of Trump indictments, it is entirely worthless.

For example, the content and timing of indictments may have an utterly central impact on the two dynamics described in the piece: Trump’s diehard base and the unwillingness of others in the party to criticize Trump directly.

The rapidly ballooning field, combined with Mr. Trump’s seemingly unbreakable core of support, represents a grave threat to Mr. DeSantis, imperiling his ability to consolidate the non-Trump vote, and could mirror the dynamics that powered Mr. Trump’s takeover of the party in 2016.

It’s a matter of math: Each new entrant threatens to steal a small piece of Mr. DeSantis’s potential coalition — whether it be Mr. Pence with Iowa evangelicals or Mr. Scott with college-educated suburbanites. And these new candidates are unlikely to eat into Mr. Trump’s votes. The former president’s base — more than 30 percent of Republicans — remains strongly devoted to him.

[snip]

The reluctance to go after Mr. Trump, for many Republicans, feels eerily like a repeat of 2016. Then, Mr. Trump’s rivals left him mostly alone for months, assuming that he would implode or that they were destined to beat him the moment they could narrow the field to a one-on-one matchup, a situation that never transpired.

Consider how each of three legal risks (and these are only the most obvious) might affect these issues. This post builds on this series I did last month:

August Georgia indictments

The NYT itself has, as have many other close observers, noted the many signs that Fani Willis has given that she will indict Trump and others in August — probably mid-August.

The Georgia prosecutor leading an investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and his allies has taken the unusual step of announcing remote work days for most of her staff during the first three weeks of August, asking judges in a downtown Atlanta courthouse not to schedule trials for part of that time as she prepares to bring charges in the inquiry.

The moves suggest that Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, is expecting a grand jury to unseal indictments during that time period. Ms. Willis outlined the remote work plan and made the request to judges in a letter sent on Thursday to 21 Fulton County officials, including the chief county judge, Ural Glanville, and the sheriff, Pat Labat.

“Thank you for your consideration and assistance in keeping the Fulton County Judicial Complex safe during this time,” wrote Ms. Willis, who has already asked the F.B.I. to help with security in and around the courthouse.

Ms. Willis had said in a previous letter that any charges related to the Trump investigation would come in the grand jury term that runs from July 11 to Sept. 1. Her letter on Thursday appears to offer more specificity on timing.

That means these indictments will come around the same time as the GOP primary debate scheduled for Milwaukee, hosted by Fox.

Trump has already signaled he may not attend this debate and the party has talked about floating minimum requirements to avoid another cattle call like we saw in 2016. If Willis indicts before this debate, the debate will focus closely on those indictments, meaning the middling candidates will be on a stage without Trump talking about alleged crimes he committed to try to win the 2020 election — alleged crimes he committed instead of doing what he could to win the two Georgia Senate seats that tipped control to Democrats.

While I agree with NYT that a cattle call primary and DeSantis’ weaknesses help Trump, had DeSantis had a stronger start, Trump might have been able to finish off any perceived opposition before substantive indictments drop. Now a bunch of other people will be prepped to capitalize on opportunities created by any Trump charges.

A far more important dynamic than the timing of this, though, is the likelihood Willis will indict others. If those others are just top Trump aides and a handful of fake electors (with other fake electors cooperating against them), it could set up a Trump versus the party dynamic, especially given Brian Kemp’s singular success at finding a way to ignore Trump’s demands while not antagonizing him. But if more Republicans are indicted — and commentary on the fake electors plot always seems to forget that the plot involved some of the most prominent Republicans in all the swing states necessary to win the presidential — then it may tend to solidify the Republican party with Trump, in spite of the legal damage his efforts to steal the last election will start to do.

It matters that Fox will host this debate, too, though it’s still too early to tell how. In the wake of the Dominion settlement and with Smartmatic still to come, Fox News has swung wildly from supporting to criticizing Trump. But Rupert Murdoch does seem intent on finding an alternative to him. And that means this debate may provide an opportunity for someone else to break out of the pack.

Stolen documents

Recent reporting suggests that possible August Georgia indictments may not even be the next indictments against Trump.

Last week, both the WSJ and Bloomberg reported that the stolen documents investigation is substantially finished, with Bloomberg suggesting it could be a matter of days or weeks after today’s federal holiday before Jack Smith announces charges.

Special Counsel Jack Smith is wrapping up his investigation into former president Donald Trump’s refusal to return classified documents after his election defeat and is poised to announce possible criminal charges in the days or weeks after Memorial Day, according to people familiar with the matter.

For months, key Republicans like Bill Barr and Andy McCarthy have been treating the stolen documents case as a legitimate investigation, effectively giving firebreathing Republicans permission to criticize Trump for these suspected crimes. And they’re doing so even if this is charged only as obstruction, 18 USC 1519.

Jack Smith might tell any of four stories with a hypothetical stolen documents indictment:

  • A straight-up obstruction charge for blowing off the August subpoena, the likes of which Barr envisions
  • An 18 USC 793 indictment charging fairly innocuous documents — the two classified documents used along with post-presidential records and the schedules Chamberlain Harris copied — both of which show Trump made use of stolen classified documents for his own personal benefit; such an indictment might focus on the fact that Trump made classified documents available to others, including non-staffers, too
  • An 18 USC 793 indictment making it clear that Trump sought out some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets in advance to take with him when he left; such an indictment might plausibly include a 18 USC 2071 charge, which with conviction, disqualifies someone from holding federal office (though that punishment is constitutionally suspect)
  • An Espionage Act indictment making it clear that documents Trump is believed to have stolen have not yet been retrieved and tying gaps in surveillance footage to business meetings at Mar-a-Lago with foreigners reflecting Smith’s recent focus on Trump’s business deals

We don’t know how Jack Smith will charge it if he does (or where, which for reasons I laid out here, is critically important). But the very last thing Smith is known to have done — the one thing he has done since what WaPo described as the last known grand jury meeting on May 5 — is obtain 16 documents from the Archives advising Trump about whether or how he should declassify specific records.

In a May 16 letter obtained by CNN, acting Archivist Debra Steidel Wall writes to Trump, “The 16 records in question all reflect communications involving close presidential advisers, some of them directed to you personally, concerning whether, why, and how you should declassify certain classified records.”

[snip]

According to the letter, Trump tried to block the special counsel from accessing the 16 records by asserting a claim of “constitutionally based privilege.” But in her letter, Wall rejects that claim, stating that the special counsel’s office has represented that it “is prepared to demonstrate with specificity to a court, why it is likely that the 16 records contain evidence that would be important to the grand jury’s investigation.”

The special counsel also told the Archives that the evidence is “not practically available from another source.”

The letter goes on to state that the records will be handed over on May 24, 2023 “unless prohibited by an intervening court order.”

Smith would have obtained these records last Wednesday, three weeks after the last activity of the grand jury.

You don’t hold off on indicting someone to obtain such records — the content of which Smith surely already knew from interviews with those who wrote the documents — solely to indict on obstruction.

There’s literally no predicting how Republicans would respond to a stolen documents indictment. But Barr and McCarthy have been laying the foundation to use it to finally split with Trump for months. And if such an indictment included a 18 USC 2071 count, it would present the additional dilemma for Republicans that if an inevitable constitutional challenge of the statute failed, their leading candidate could not legally be President.

It matters, too, that Jack Smith is a white male who has said literally nothing since he was appointed, not an elected Black prosecutor. It matters that Merrick Garland didn’t take the bait last week (though virtually every journalist did), when Trump responded to news of an imminent indictment by trying to turn this into a legal fight between him and Joe Biden’s appointed Attorney General, rather than him and laws his own advisors told him not to break.

I don’t know what to expect from a hypothetical stolen documents indictment; nor does anyone else. But I do know that if it drops in the next month or so, if it is perceived as legitimate and serious, it provides an opportunity for Republicans who have long been seeking an opportunity to split with Trump.

January 6 conspiracy

Finally, there are potential charges tied to January 6, which may have to wait on appellate certainty around the presumed lead charge, 18 USC 1512(c)(2) or may require an interim set of charges against others.

Aside from expecting some conspiracy charge under that obstruction statute, though, we have no idea what such an indictment might look like. Here are some possibilities that would affect how the GOP responds:

Trump could be charged with inciting the attempted assassination of his Vice President. Smith — and DOJ prosecutors before him — spent a lot of time obtaining details about the communications between Mike Pence and Trump in advance of insurrection, as well as on Trump’s inaction that day. While it would be the most aggressive potential charge, there is evidence to support it. How would mainstream Republicans respond if Trump were charged with siccing a mob he knew to be armed on a lifelong GOPer, someone who will be an announced primary challenger to Trump by then?

Trump could be charged with aiding and abetting the near-murder of Michael Fanone. I’ve laid out how distinctly DOJ treated the prosecution of Danny Rodriguez’ co-conspirator. Prosecutors aired footage from Ellipse speeches rather than excluding it from trial, as DOJ has successfully done with dozens of other defendants. DOJ developed evidence to show Rodriguez responding viscerally and violently to Rudy Giuliani and Trump’s Ellipse speeches just hours before he walked to the Capitol and tased a cop defending it. Rodriguez confessed to the FBI he knew in advance such casualties might be necessary. If DOJ were to implicate Trump in such an assault — something Judge Amit Mehta said was at least plausible over a year ago — it would implicate Trump in the worst assault of an officer that day.

Trump could be charged with conspiring with convicted seditionists. As I laid out here, Trump asked Alex Jones to bring his mob to the Capitol, and after Jones brought the mob there, the Proud Boys exploited those bodies to attack the Capitol. Trump is — as an exhibit introduced in the Christopher Worrell case (whose guilty verdict was closely reliant on evidence implicating Roger Stone) showed — literally the coin of the Proud Boys gang.

DOJ emphasized the import of Trump’s Stand Back and Stand By comment from the opening arguments of that sedition trial. Those are just some of the reasons why it is possible DOJ could charge Trump for conspiring not just with Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, but also with men already convicted of sedition. Such a charge would take more time to develop — but charging Trump with conspiring with the Proud Boys is completely within the realm of conspiracy law.

Trump’s efforts to cheat could damage swing-state Republican parties. Before Trump asked Republicans from seven swing states to help him create fraudulent certificates in an attempt to steal the election, Kenneth Cheesebro wrote down (!!!) that such an effort would be legally problematic in Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. It’s bad enough asking key Republicans to break the law to help win an election; it is insane that Trump’s lawyers wrote down that it would be illegal before asking them. Of those four states, only Republicans in Pennsylvania took adequate efforts to protect themselves legally from Trump’s requests that they submit fraudulent certificates to the Archives. That means it is possible that DOJ will charge some of the most prominent Republicans in precisely the states that Trump proved unable to win in 2020. Such charges could align Trump and those Republican parties on the same side, or it could really piss off those whom Trump’s recklessness endangered. In Georgia, at least, some prominent Republicans have chosen to testify against others if it means avoiding jail time themselves and I could see Republicans in other states making the same choice.

Trump could be accused of cheating Republican small donors. Trump’s success in 2016 and since has always built off his success at fundraising from small donors. But even as he reaped millions from such efforts, he played fast and loose with campaign finance law, violations of the law for which Republican Federal Elections Commissioners have thus far refused to punish him. Now Jack Smith is reportedly considering criminal charges for the same kind of conduct — in fact, criminal charges tied to claiming he was going to pursue election integrity but then paying lawyers for unrelated legal exposure. Such charges for defrauding his supporters — parallel to the successful charges SDNY prosecuted in the Build the Wall case — would make it clear that Trump has been cheating loyal Republicans for years. They may not care in bulk, but some of the Build the Wall victims did. Such charges might also limit the ways Trump could fundraise going forward. Republicans might not care about the fraud itself, but they would care if a presidential candidate might be disadvantaged financially because of alleged crimes he had committed in the past.

Obviously, we don’t know whether these prosecutors will charge and if so with what (though in both the Georgia and stolen documents case, prosecutors look poised to ask a grand jury for an indictment). The Georgia case is the only one where we have a good idea of timing (though that timing is guaranteed to matter for the primary).

Trump actually used the Russian investigation brilliantly to win personal loyalty from Republicans who had previously been tepid to him (something I’ve been meaning to write up). The Alvin Bragg indictment, similarly, helped him at least in the short term. Trump’s bio on his failed media site literally equates the pursuit of him with an attack on his aggrieved supporters.

This is an utterly central part of his brand, the conceit that totally justified legal pursuits of him were really just an attack on the core identities of angry white nationalists.

And that brand has worked stupendously well. They love him because he is a suspected criminal according to the code of their imagined Deep State. There’s some reason to believe that Boris Epshteyn, a political advisor gatekeeping his legal advisors, has pursued a strategy in the stolen documents case that emphasizes this confrontation even while putting Trump at far greater legal risk.

Thus far, Trump has successfully used his own legal exposure as a way to grievance-monger with other Republicans, building loyalty every time his own legal jeopardy increases. If he were able to seal the GOP nomination before more serious indictments drop, he might do the same here.

But the possibility — the likelihood even — of criminal charges before he makes this equation into the GOP slogan for the entire 2024 election may disrupt that power.

The next three months, before the primary formally starts with a debate, are likely to be unprecedented in the history of presidential elections. Because they are unprecedented, literally no one can envision how those events will affect the primary, even if we know what the charges were and who else will get charged.

What we can be sure of, though, is that the old stale horse race analysis won’t apply to this race.

Update: I should have made something clearer. This analysis, about the impact of potential indictments alone, is meant to be separate from the possibility he’ll be convicted of these crimes. It is virtually impossible that Trump would be convicted before November 2024, and barring a successful application of 18 USC 2071, none of these charges would prevent him from being elected.

Rather, the argument here is that these indictments have the ability to alter the loyalty calculus for Republican voters. I’m not even arguing that will work against Trump! There are a number of ways it could actually help him, at least through the primary. All I’m saying is that each of these potential indictments carries with it the possibility of upending the loyalty that the NYT described, and doing so in ways that are so unprecedented (even setting aside the way Trump himself is almost unprecedented in the US), that no one will really know how it’ll all fall out.

And that’s probably why more Republicans keep hopping into the race.

ABC Reports that Sources Familiar Say 2 + 2 = 5

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In a piece describing that Jack Smith has substantially completed his investigation into stolen documents, WSJ reported Trump’s associates believed that the former President would be indicted and were already making plans to profit off him being charged with one or more federal crimes.

Some of Trump’s close associates are bracing for his indictment and anticipate being able to fundraise off a prosecution, people in the former president’s circle said, as clashes within the Trump legal team have led to the departure of a key lawyer.

Hours after WSJ reported that Trump was going to try to profit off being a criminal suspect, he posted a letter, with just one substantive paragraph, on Truth Social. Aside from the letterhead and signatures from Jim Trusty and John Rowley, it was indistinguishable from Trump’s other grievance-farming on his failing social media platform, claiming that,

Unlike President Biden, his son Hunter, or the Biden family, President Trump is being treated unfairly. No President of the United States has ever, in the history of the country, been baselessly investigated in such an outrageous and unlawful fashion.

Then it asked for a meeting with the recused Attorney General to discuss the “ongoing injustice being perpetrated by your Special Counsel.”

It copied unnamed members of Congress, the last thing a letter seriously asking for dialogue with the Attorney General would do.

It’s a campaign stunt, not a letter designed to request a meeting about potential upcoming indictment(s). In fact, just days ago, Tim Parlatore explained that he quit because Boris Epshteyn would not permit him to engage in that kind of discussion professionally.

Nevertheless, multiple news outlets decided to treat this letter as a serious bid for discussion with the recused Attorney General. In ABC’s case, it falsely claimed that the letter “present[ed] arguments” that Trump should not be charged in the stolen documents case, citing “sources familiar with the matter.”

The letter, though thin on details, presents arguments that Trump should not be charged in the investigation related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

In other words, rather than convey to ABC’s readers what the document actually says — which is nothing more than a claim Trump is being treated unfairly, a claim that is easy to debunk — its reporters called up Trump’s lawyers and transcribed what they claimed the letter said, or perhaps simply parroted their cover for releasing a letter better designed to raise money and sow violence, rather than just reporting what the letter actually did say.

Because “sources familiar” told them so, ABC reported the letter said something it did not. 2 + 2 = 5.

Jim Trusty used to work at DOJ. He knows how to write such a letter. He did not. But ABC nevertheless claimed that he and John Rowley did.

2 + 2 = 5.

As the two journalists described how the letter was something that it wasn’t on Twitter, one of them — Alex Mallin — likened it to Trump’s purported request to speak with Garland last August, just before Garland publicly spoke about the search on Trump’s beach resort.

He didn’t mention that Trump’s comment came after Trump’s false claims of victimhood led a Trump supporter and January 6 participant to attempt to breach the Cincinnati FBI office. He didn’t mention that that earlier outreach sure looked like an implicit threat.

I really get the inclination to treat Trump’s response to being caught stealing classified documents as if it is a normal legal proceeding. I get the inclination to pretend everything is normal.

But that doesn’t justify describing the plain content of the letter as something it’s not.

The letter is a fundraising vehicle. It’s an attempt to discredit rule of law. It’s probably an attempt to sow violence again. Claiming it is something else because sources you’ve granted anonymity said it is is not journalism.

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