It’s all subtext. Donald Trump knows he didn’t really use a magic wand to declassify all the top-secret documents the FBI found at Mar-a-Lago. He’s doubtless aware they weren’t his to hoard like “misplaced” sets of White House china. Trump had his reasons — we just don’t yet know what they were. Maybe he’s just a magpie, a collector, who likes to know he has access to dangerous secrets. Or maybe it’s something more nefarious.
Maybe he’s just a magpie, a collector, who likes to know he has access to dangerous secrets. Or maybe it’s something more nefarious.
What we do know is that Trump seemingly violated laws that every other lawful government employee takes seriously. The highly classified TS/SCI materials Trump cavalierly stored in drawers and boxes at his Florida resort belong in a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF, that is properly shielded from prying eyes and electronic ears.
And Trump had repeated opportunities to get this right. The National Archives asked for the return of his presidential papers at least by January 2021. The Justice Department sent him a subpoena for the return of materials with classification markings that June. Trump had every reason, including legal obligation, to check the boxes he’d brought home from the White House carefully and return anything he had “inadvertently” retained. And yet, here we are.
Trump treated classified secrets as if they were his personal property. He very likely violated federal laws in doing so. Ironically, it was Trump who first disclosed the search of Mar-a-Lago to the public. The Justice Department conducted the search with care, but Trump drew attention to it, calling it “political persecution.” Next, Trump and his supporters claimed that anything found at Mar-a-Lago was planted by the FBI. Calls from Trump’s crowd to “defund the FBI” followed on the heels of this rank speculation, which was of course untrue. But that didn’t stop Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican Trump devotee, from hawking T-shirts bearing the unintentionally ironic slogan.
Trump is following a familiar pattern here: When in trouble, try to win over public opinion with an excuse for, or distraction from, whatever it is you’ve done this time. It’s not important that the excuse be true; It can be something as patently false as saying you won an election you lost decisively. Trump’s penchant for the false, the divisive and the anti-democratic is his hallmark.
Trump did plenty of damage to our institutions during his four years in office, casting aspersions on any entity involved in legitimate oversight of his conduct. Now, he’s doing it again. How else to make sense of the conflicting and ludicrous stories he’s spun over the past few weeks. Trump’s claim that he can magically declassify documents not only conflicts with his earlier claim material was planted, it also makes clear just how cavalier he is about the country and the people he pledged to serve. Blame the FBI. Blame the Justice Department. As always, Trump is willing to save himself at the expense of the public’s confidence in institutions that are essential for our republic to function.
The arguments Trump’s lawyers have made on his behalf in court follow the same path. They have acted as though presidential documents, which belong to the people and should remain in the custody of the National Archives, are his and due to be returned to him. What followed was predictable — the archivists, government employees who diligently keep the public record of our country are now living with violent threats.
It’s important to see the frame here. Trump benefits from damaging people’s confidence in the legitimacy of our institutions because his conduct is ever at odds with how a public servant is obligated to behave. His call for a special master fits this pattern. Every day in this country, federal law enforcement agents execute search warrants. The evidence they obtain is reviewed without any external oversight. Special masters are used when a lawyer’s office is searched, so privileged materials from the lawyer’s clients can be screened out. That’s not Trump’s situation.
There is no reason to believe the Justice Department’s filter team isn’t adequate here. In fact, the transcript from Thursday’s hearing reflects that the filter team took a very expansive view of what documents might be privileged and withheld them from the investigative team. Documents with even a possibility of privilege were set aside and not reviewed. In other words, the team has acted with the utmost integrity.
But Trump continues with his efforts to delegitimize the investigation.
You can’t trust the Justice Department, according to Team Trump. Who could possibly benefit from destroying the public’s trust in federal law enforcement down the road? And, just as important, all of us lose when the Justice Department’s ability to enforce our criminal laws, hold perpetrators accountable and protect our communities is damaged.
Trump is intent on damaging the FBI now. Perhaps he hopes to benefit from that in the future. What better way to sabotage an investigation than to go after law enforcement? Trump characterized the photograph attached as an exhibit to the Justice Department’s court filing as “staged,” as if that somehow proved the FBI was involved in a malicious conspiracy against him. But the photo, which shows a group of classified materials denoted by an evidence marker that reads “2A” is precisely the type of photograph taken during a search to document the evidence to preserve its admissibility at trial. Trump focused on the bogus argument that the photo was staged to distract from the spread of classified materials it reveals, in the process offering more “evidence” for his base of bad faith behavior by the FBI. What better way to mount a defense, when you don’t have one, then to attack the investigators? Go on the offensive, claim the police are at fault. While prosecutors see this on occasion, the stakes here are obviously much, much higher. And so is the potential damage. Mistrust, conspiracy theories and disinformation seem to be all that Trump has in his arsenal. He doesn’t have a legitimate defense to unlawfully retaining classified material. He put our nation’s secrets in a resort where guests could buy and con their way inside. Spies may also have recognized the opportunity while Trump was president. A Chinese national was arrested on the grounds. God knows who else walked in and out and in again, and who could have had access to the documents Trump cavalierly stored in drawers and cardboard storage boxes. Trump shows no signs of taking this matter seriously. And there will be no stopping him, unless the same Justice Department he is attacking holds him accountable. And this, of course, explains why Trump is trying to undermine the country’s confidence in the Justice Department — so that it will lack the credibility it needs to bring him to justice. Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, said it best during the second impeachment trial: “He has betrayed our national security, and he will do so again. … You will not change him. You cannot constrain him. He is who he is. Truth matters little to him. What’s right matters even less, and decency matters not at all.” What Trump is doing isn’t surprising, but it never ceases to shock. Hell-bent on having his way, Trump is perfectly happy to rend the fabric of the republic to serve his own purposes. CORRECTION (Sept. 4, 2022, 11:25 am E.T.): A previous version of this article misspelled the last name of a representative from Georgia. It is Marjorie Taylor Greene, not Green.
