Trump 55: The Bronze Baron Of Bedminster Wants Back On Twitter And the Forbes 400

[Jana814]

Of course Trump is blaming what happened on Democrats. I’m not surprised he mad that Pence refused to change the outcome. He is blaming anyone he can think of. 

[formergothardite]

I realize Trump uses no logic, but if Jan. 6th was democrats why would he pardon them. I don’t think Trump has any intention of pardoning anyone unless they give him money, but what he is saying defies logic. 

[Jana814]

40 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

I realize Trump uses no logic, but if Jan. 6th was democrats why would he pardon them. I don’t think Trump has any intention of pardoning anyone unless they give him money, but what he is saying defies logic. 

Trump has never been logical. I have known that for years!!  It makes me nuts that believe he was the greatest president ever. 

[Xan]

5 hours ago, Jana814 said:

Trump has never been logical. I have known that for years!!  It makes me nuts that believe he was the greatest president ever. 

If you ask a Trumpie why he was the greatest president ever, their answers are vague.  The go along the line of "he kept his promises" and "he acted strong against our enemies".  The truth is, he did neither.  I think what they mean is that he was their great, big 1955-all-over-again president.  He was white and they're still pissed about that black guy.  He was rude to minorities and gays and they want to do that too.  He was a bully and they like bullies.  They don't know what he did.  They just know what he stands for.  And what he stands for is just racism, pure and simple.  They might dress it up in religion but it's still racism.

It's about like the situation with Covid deniers -- I'm just done.  I'm finding it hard to even talk to people if I find out they like Trump.

[47of74]

Fuck knob didn’t think this through. 

Quote

If Donald Trump is right that former Vice President Mike Pence could have single-handedly tossed out the results of the 2020 presidential election, that means current Vice President Kamala Harris gets to choose the nextpresident, quipped Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.).

Pence did not — nor will Harris — have the right to unilaterally pick a president regardless of voters’ choice.

But Lofgren was mocking Trump’s claim. If it were up to a vice president — and not the nation’s voters — to choose the next president, a political party would never quit the Oval Office.

“I guess the former president is saying that the vice president gets to choose the next president,” Lofgren said Sunday on CNN. (Check out the video above at 1:40.) “In which case, Kamala Harris will be presiding at the [next] counting of the [electoral] votes. I guess he’s saying she gets to chose who the next president is.”

 

[47of74]

America’s crazy ex…I guess that’s one way to describe fuck face

Quote

A former Washington, DC, police officer who was badly beaten at the Capitol riot said former President President Donald Trump was acting like "America's crazy ex."

Michael Fanone, who resigned from the force to become a CNN commentator last December, was responding to Trump's speech at a Texas rally over the weekend in which he said he would consider pardoning January 6 rioters if he decides to run and is reelected in 2024.

"[Trump] still has a great deal of support in this country and many of those supporters have already proven — like they did on January 6 — that they're willing to commit violence on his behalf," Fanone told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Monday.

"There's just no bottom to what it is he's willing to say," he continued. "He's like America's crazy ex and he's just decided that if he can't have us, no one can and he's going to tear apart our democracy and our country if he can't get reelected."

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[Cartmann99]

Spoiler

 

[Jana814]

I’m glad Mike Pence said what he did. He should have said this a year ago. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"This was the week when Trump revealed all"

Quote

Former president Donald Trump has told some big lies over the years. One of the biggest, it now is clear, came on Jan. 7, 2021, the day after his supporters assaulted the U.S. Capitol.

On Jan. 6, as law enforcement officers fought valiantly against an armed mob of rioters attacking the Capitol, Trump remained in the White House, silent in the face of repeated efforts by advisers, family members and allies who pleaded with him to try to call a halt to the violence.

The next day, in a videotaped address, he said, finally, that he was “outraged” by the “heinous attack” on the Capitol. “America is and must always be a nation of law and order,” he said. “The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy. To those who engage in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay.”

He didn’t mean it, as he made clear last weekend. Speaking at a rally in Conroe, Tex., he told his followers, “If I run [for president in 2024] and I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly. We will treat them fairly, and if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons, because they are being treated so unfairly.”

Trump’s words no longer have quite the shock value they once had. His rallies don’t command live coverage on major cable networks. Having been banned from Twitter, his never-ending statements lack the power they once might have had. It can be easy to dismiss his rantings. But it would be foolhardy to ignore what he is saying or thinking.

If Trump were a spent force in politics, what he says now would matter less. But he wants to run for president again and has a $122 million political bank account at his disposal to carry him forward. He may have lost some support among some who think of themselves as Republicans, but he still holds a grip on the Republican Party. If the 2024 primaries were held today, it is difficult to imagine him not rolling over any and all challengers.

His hold on the GOP was never more obvious than on Friday, when the Republican National Committee voted to censure Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) for their work on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. The censure resolution described the two Republicans as “participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

The former president continues to claim the election was rife with fraud, despite the lack of evidence. What he is saying now provides a preview of how he might try to use his powers if restored to the Oval Office.

The Texas rally was just one event in a week in which the former president gave the country a wide-open look at what has long been assumed: that his false claims of a stolen election were much more than the complaints of a sore loser. His goal all along was to do more than disrupt the process of certifying Joe Biden’s victory. He wanted to find a way to overturn the results of the election.

The day after his Texas rally, Trump issued a statement from his Save America PAC. He took note of discussions underway in Congress to amend the Electoral Count Act of 1887, the law that governed how then-Vice President Mike Pence handled his responsibilities as presiding officer at the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress that reviewed and ratified the electoral college counts from the states.

Trump had repeatedly implored Pence to block certification of Biden’s victory. Pence told Trump he did not have the power to do so, but even at the rally preceding the assault on the Capitol, Trump was still urging Pence to do what Pence had said he could not do. Discussions about amending the act that governed those proceedings have apparently outraged the former president. Here is his statement from last Sunday:

“If the Vice President (Mike Pence) had ‘absolutely no right’ to change the Presidential Election results in the Senate, despite fraud and many other irregularities, how come the Democrats and RINO Republicans, like Wacky [Sen.] Susan Collins [R-Maine], are desperately trying to pass legislation that will not allow the Vice President to change the results of the election? Actually, what they are saying, is that Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away. Unfortunately, he didn’t exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!”

The last line of the statement is as blatant as Trump has been about his true intentions — to overturn a fair election — but it was written in such a matter-of-fact way that many who read it would give it a ho-hum, there-he-goes-again reaction: “Of course he wanted to overturn the election,” a reader might say. “So what’s new? Time to move on.”

That’s exactly the danger that continues to exist, a weariness with all of it, a desire to put those difficult moments from early 2021 in the rearview mirror. Pence, however, was not ready to ignore Trump’s wild claim. Speaking Friday at a gathering of the Federalist Society in Florida, Pence rebuked the former president as he called Jan. 6 “a dark day” in the history of the Capitol. “This week, our former president said I had the right to ‘overturn the election,’ ” Pence said. “President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election.”

Friday was a day on which future battle lines were being drawn inside the Republican Party, with a handful of elected officials, including Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah), standing up for Cheney and Kinzinger while so many others, symbolized by the RNC, following along Trump’s dangerous path. Other revelations during the past week provided additional reminders of just how serious Trump, his advisers and especially some of the conspiracy theorists trying to influence him were about trying to delay, disrupt and possibly overturn the election through the extraordinary use of government power. Reminders, too, of the stakes ahead.

The New York Times reported that weeks after the election, Trump asked his personal lawyer and adviser Rudolph W. Giuliani to check with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to see whether the government could legally take possession of voting machines in some key states. Giuliani was told DHS lacked such authority. Trump reportedly had raised the issue of seizing voting machines with then-Attorney General William P. Barr, who according to the Times, also told Trump the Justice Department had no such authority — and that there was no evidence of a crime in the conduct of the election.

The Washington Post reported on efforts by Trump’s outside allies, who prepared a memo calling on Trump to use the powers of the National Security Agency and the Defense Department to go through raw intelligence with the hope of showing that foreign powers had tampered with election results. “Proof of foreign interference would ‘support next steps to defend the Constitution in a manner superior to current civilian-only judicial remedies,’ ” the memo stated, according to The Post’s reporting. The words “in a manner superior” to the courts is a chilling suggestion of the use of extrajudicial powers.

The House committee investigating the events surrounding what happened on Jan. 6 continues to gather evidence, including documents from the Trump White House, and will hold public hearings later this year and issue a report after that. Expect more revelations in the months ahead.

Still strong is the belief that because it didn’t happen, it can’t happen. Yet Trump continues to reveal himself, his true motives and perhaps what he would do if he were again to become president. No one should be surprised.

 

[Howl]

21 hours ago, Jana814 said:

I’m glad Mike Pence said what he did. He should have said this a year ago. 

Lots of speculation that Pence's comment signals that Trump can be challenged because he has so much legal liability that he's basically toast.  It's a huge deal! 

[fraurosena]

On 2/5/2022 at 3:23 AM, Cartmann99 said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Oops he did it again! 

Yet another admission for those investigating him. He just can’t help himself, can he?

[AlmostSavedAtTacoBell]

On 2/4/2022 at 8:23 PM, Cartmann99 said:

  Hide contents

 

Don’t do my girl Veruca dirty like that! At least she got her comeuppance AND gave her name to a great band. I see no potential for any band naming itself after Trump. (One also hopes the Willy Wonka brats learned from their mistakes, whereas Trump is evil to the core.) 

[GreyhoundFan]

"National Archives had to retrieve Trump White House records from Mar-a-Lago"

Quote

President Donald Trump improperly removed multiple boxes from the White House that were retrieved by the National Archives and Records Administration last month from his Mar-a-Lago residence because they contained documents and other items that should have been turned over to the agency, according to three people familiar with the visit.

The recovery of the boxes from Trump’s Florida resort raises new concerns about his adherence to the Presidential Records Act, which requires the preservation of memos, letters, notes, emails, faxes and other written communications related to a president’s official duties.

Trump advisers deny any nefarious intent and said the boxes contained mementos, gifts, letters from world leaders and other correspondence. The items included correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which Trump once described as “love letters,” as well as a letter left for his successor by President Barack Obama, according to two people familiar with the contents.

Discussions between the Archives and the former president’s lawyers that began last year resulted in the transfer of the records in January, according to one person familiar with the conversations. Another person familiar with the materials said Trump advisers discussed what had to be returned in December. People familiar with the transfer, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal details.

The Archives declined to comment. A spokesman for Trump did not respond to a request for comment.

The Archives has struggled to cope with a president who flouted document retention requirements and frequently ripped up official documents, leaving hundreds of pages taped back together — or some that arrived at the Archives still in pieces. Some damaged documents were among those turned over to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.

“The only way that a president can really be held accountable long term is to preserve a record about who said what, who did what, what policies were encouraged or adopted, and that is such an important part of the long-term scope of accountability — beyond just elections and campaigns,” presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky said.

From a national security perspective, Chervinsky added, if records and documents are not disclosed, “that could pose a real concern if the next administration is flying blind without that information.”

Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), a member of the Jan. 6 committee who did not have knowledge of the Mar-a-Lago transfer, said the overall records situation reflected the “unconventional nature of how this White House operated.”

“That they didn’t follow rules is not a shock,” Murphy said. “As for how this development relates to the committee’s work, we have different sources and methods for obtaining documents and information that we are seeking.”

The recovery of documents from Trump’s Florida estate is just the latest example of what records personnel described as chronic difficulties in preserving records in the Trump era — the most challenging since Richard Nixon sought to block disclosure of official records, including White House tapes.

All recent administrations have had some Presidential Records Act violations, most often involving the use of unofficial email and telephone accounts. White House documents from multiple administrations also have been retrieved by the Archives after a president has left office.

But personnel familiar with recent administrations said the Trump era stands apart in the scale of the records retrieved from Mar-a-Lago. One person familiar with the transfer characterized it as “out of the ordinary. … NARA has never had that kind of volume transfer after the fact like this.”

Trump himself was unconcerned about the records act, according to former advisers.

“Things that are national security sensitive or very clearly government documents should have been a part of a first sweep — so the fact that it’s been this long doesn’t reflect well on [Trump],” said a lawyer who worked in the White House Counsel’s Office under Obama. “Why has it taken for a year for these boxes to get there? And are there more boxes?”

While the law requires that presidents preserve records related to an administration’s activities, the Archives has very limited enforcement capabilities. The Presidential Records Act operates on the basis of a “gentlemen’s agreement,” as one Archives official phrased it.

Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor and constitutional scholar, along with other legal experts point to the potential for enforcement that could take place via federal records laws. But several said they thought such action would be unlikely.

“There is a high bar for bringing such cases,” said Charles Tiefer, former counsel to the House of Representatives who teaches at the University of Baltimore School of Law.

Typically, he said, records preservation proceeds by mutual agreement with the occupant of the White House, staff and archivists. “But if there is willful and unlawful intent” to violate the law then the picture changes, he said, with penalties of up to three years in jail for individuals who willfully conceal or destroy public records.

“You can’t prosecute for just tearing up papers,” he said of Trump. “You would have to show him being highly selective and have evidence that he wanted to behave unlawfully.”

Some former Trump aides say they do not believe Trump was acting with criminal intent.

“I don’t think he did this out of malicious intent to avoid complying with the Presidential Records Act,” one former Trump White House official said. “As long as he’s been in business, he’s been very transactional and it was probably his longtime practice and I don’t think his habits changed when he got to the White House.”

 

[Becky]

I have no doubt whatsoever that TFG has been able to hide or destroy records. The question is whether he will ever be held accountable for it - or anything else, for that matter. 

[GreyhoundFan]

6 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"National Archives had to retrieve Trump White House records from Mar-a-Lago"

 

This is so damned true:

A couple more:

Spoiler

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Trump's a loser is just an expression too. And it's true.

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This is so damned true:

I had a massive brain fart while reading this tweet. I originally interpreted that second sentence to mean that Hannity possessed special nails designed to attach feces to roofs. 

[fraurosena]

Show of hands! Who is surprised they found this in the documents illegally taken to Mar-a-Lago?

What, no one?

Archives Found Possible Classified Material in Boxes Returned by Trump

Quote

The National Archives and Records Administration discovered what it believed was classified information in documents Donald J. Trump had taken with him from the White House as he left office, according to a person briefed on the matter.

The discovery, which occurred after Mr. Trump returned 15 boxes of documents to the government last month, prompted the National Archives to reach out to the Justice Department for guidance, the person said. The department told the National Archives to have its inspector general examine the matter, the person said.

It is unclear what the inspector general has done since then, in particular, whether the inspector general has referred the matter to the Justice Department.

An inspector general is required to alert the Justice Department to the discovery of any classified materials that were found outside authorized government channels.

Making a referral to the Justice Department would put senior officials in the position of having to decide whether to open an investigation, a scenario that would thrust the department into a highly contentious political matter.

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the National Archives had asked the Justice Department to examine Mr. Trump’s handling of White House records.

Officials with the National Archives did not respond to messages seeking comment.

In January, after a lengthy back and forth between Mr. Trump’s lawyers and the National Archives, Mr. Trump handed over more than a dozen boxes of materials, including documents, mementos, gifts and letters. Among the documents were the original versions of a letter that former President Barack Obama had left for Mr. Trump when he was first sworn in, and letters written to Mr. Trump by the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un.

Also included in the boxes was a map Mr. Trump famously drew on with a black Sharpie to demonstrate the track of Hurricane Dorian heading toward Alabama in 2019 to back up a declaration he had made on Twitter that contradicted weather forecasts.

The boxes had originally been sent to Mar-a-Lago from the White House residence, where a range of items — including clothes — were hastily packed up in Mr. Trump’s final days in office. Legally, Mr. Trump was required to leave the documents, letters and gifts in the custody of the federal government so the National Archives could store them.

After the F.B.I., during the 2016 presidential campaign, investigated Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified material while she was secretary of state, Mr. Trump assailed her, helping make the issue pivotal in the outcome of that race. In that case, the intelligence community’s inspector general had made a national security referral to the F.B.I., prompting the investigation of Mrs. Clinton.

But during Mr. Trump’s administration, top White House officials were deeply concerned about how little regard Mr. Trump showed for sensitive national security materials. John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, tried to stop classified documents from being taken out of the Oval Office and brought up to the residence because he was concerned about what Mr. Trump may do with them and how that may jeopardize national security.

Similar to Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and daughter Ivanka used personal email accounts for work purposes. And even after being warned by aides, Mr. Trump repeatedly ripped up government documents that had to be taped back together to prevent him from being accused of destroying federal property.

Now Mr. Trump faces questions about his handling of classified information — a question that is complicated because as president he had the authority to declassify any government information. It is unclear whether Mr. Trump had declassified materials the National Archives discovered in the boxes before he left office. Under federal law, he no longer maintains the ability to declassify documents after leaving office.

He invoked the power to declassify information several times as his administration publicly released materials that helped him politically, particularly on issues like the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia.

Toward the end of the administration, Mr. Trump ripped pictures that intrigued him out of the President’s Daily Brief — a compendium of often classified information about potential national security threats — but it is unclear whether he took them to the residence with him. In one prominent example of how he dealt with classified material, Mr. Trump in 2019 took a highly classified spy satellite image of an Iranian missile launch site, declassified it and then released the photo on Twitter.

If Mr. Trump was found to have taken materials with him that were still classified at the time he left the White House, prosecuting him would be extremely difficult and it would pit the Justice Department against Mr. Trump at a time when Attorney General Merrick B. Garland is trying to depoliticize the department.

The department and the F.B.I. also still have significant scars from its investigation into whether Mrs. Clinton mishandled classified information, as the bureau was accused of unfairly tarnishing her and interfering in the 2016 election.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I wonder who wrote most of this, it certainly wasn't TFG:

 

Full text under spoiler:

Spoiler

 

[Xan]

"In actuality, I have been told I was under no obligation to give this material based on various legal rulings that have been made over the years."  This is peak Donald.  He didn't write or dictate it alone since it has no misspellings or randomly capitalized words but it's exactly the sort of lie he tells.

The truth is that he was certainly under obligation to give up the materials and there have been no recent legal rulings that exempt official papers from the presidential records act.  He just thinks that, if he tells his sheep he didn't really have to turn stuff over, they'll believe him.  

I'm just curious as to what was in the burn bags.  How much stuff just got destroyed?  And is anyone ever going to subpoena the translator from his private meeting with Putin?

[Cartmann99]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

They were even marked: "Some Trump records taken to Mar-a-Lago clearly marked as classified, including documents at ‘top secret’ level"

Quote

Some of the White House documents that Donald Trump improperly took to his Mar-a-Lago residence were clearly marked as classified, including documents at the “top secret” level, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The existence of clearly marked classified documents in the trove — which has not previously been reported — is likely to intensify the legal pressure that Trump or his staffers could face, and raises new questions about why the materials were taken out of the White House.

While it was unclear how many classified documents were among those received by the Archives, some bore markings that the information was extremely sensitive and would be limited to a small group of officials with authority to view such highly classified information, the two people familiar with the matter said.

The markings were discovered by the National Archives and Records Administration, which last month arranged for the collection of 15 boxes of documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. Archives officials asked the Justice Department to look into the matter, though as of Thursday afternoon, FBI agents had yet to review the materials, according to two people familiar with the request.

It remained unclear if the Justice Department would launch a full-fledged investigation. The files were being stored in a sensitive compartmented information facility, also known as a SCIF, while Justice Department officials debated how to proceed, the two people familiar with the matter said.

Like others in this story, the people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a politically sensitive matter. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich said: “It is clear that a normal and routine process is being weaponized by anonymous, politically motivated government sources to peddle Fake News. The only entity with the ability to credibly dispute this false reporting, the National Archives, is providing no comment.”

Trump’s years-long defiance of the Presidential Records Act, which requires the preservation of memos, letters, notes, emails, faxes and other written communications related to a president’s official duties, and other unusual record keeping practices have long drawn scrutiny. In 2018, for example, Politico reported on his penchant for ripping up official documents. But in recent weeks, Trump’s activities have generated new attention — in large part because of the House select committee’s investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The Washington Post reported late last month that some of the White House records the National Archives turned over to the committee appeared to have been torn apart and then taped back together. The Post later reported that officials had recovered 15 boxes of presidential records from Mar-a-Lago, and that they suspected Trump had possibly violated laws concerning the handling of government documents — including those that might be considered classified.

A “top secret” classification is applied to information where unauthorized disclosure “could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security” according to the Archives’s Information Security Oversight Office.

Officials even keep secret some of the mechanics of how the government categorizes and stores its secrets, but in daily practice often refer to classified systems as “the high side” and unclassified government systems as “the low side.” On the high side, there are different types of classified information within “top secret” that are restricted to smaller groups of officials on a need-to-know basis, including a broad category referred to as Special Access Programs, or SAP.

Even with documents marked classified found where they don’t belong, prosecutors have a high legal bar to get to criminal charges. Prosecutors would have to prove someone intentionally mishandled the material or was grossly negligent in doing so — which can be a steep hurdle in its own right. And Trump, as president, would have had unfettered latitude to declassify material, potentially raising even bigger challenges to bringing a case against him.

Former federal prosecutor Brandon Van Grack said that some of the laws about classified information require someone to act “without authorization, and potentially the president would be able to argue he gave himself that authorization.”

But — regardless of whether a criminal case could be substantiated — Van Grack said: “the FBI would want and need to review the information and conduct an investigation to determine what occurred and whether any sources and methods were compromised.”

It is not precisely clear who packed up the classified materials at Mar-a-Lago, or how they got there in the first place. Trump was very secretive about the packing of boxes that were retrieved from Mar-a-Lago last month, and did not let other aides — including some of his most senior advisers — look at them, according to people close to him.

During his time in the White House, Trump often took official documents with him to his residence to review, accruing piles of records over time, according to people familiar with Trump’s record-keeping practices.

While that is not in itself necessarily unusual, the documents would pile up. One White House staffer said it became a problem that eventually led records staff to search for materials in classified burn bags, which are used to dispose of documents.

“For all the things written about him that he didn’t read, he often would take things with him to the residence or bring things down with him,” said a second Trump White House official. “But I don’t know that that is out of the ordinary.”

Officials had to the scramble to pack up before Joe Biden took office, and one person familiar with the events surmised that some of the documents from the residence likely made their way into boxes destined for Mar-a-Lago rather than being turned over as they should have been. One adviser said Trump began reviewing materials in December after staff received the requests from Gary Stern, a longtime Archives lawyer.

Over the summer, the Archives reached out about high-profile documents that did not seem to be among those turned over, a person familiar with the matter said. Those included correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that Trump once described as “love letters,” as well as a letter left for Trump by President Barack Obama, the person said. The National Archives also inquired about a map of Hurricane Dorian that had been altered with a black marker by Trump in a failed attempt to show he had not been wrong about the storm’s path, the person said.

Last month, Archives officials retrieved those and the other boxes, and the Archives said in a statement that Trump representatives were “continuing to search” for additional records that have yet to be turned over.

David Laufman, a former Justice Department counterintelligence official who was involved in prosecutions and investigations over the mishandling of classified information, said Trump being a former president “presents additional litigation risk factors, insofar as he, as president, would have had the authority to declassify documents or potentially even determine where classified documents could be transferred.”

But, he added, “there’s no question that it was improper for classified information to be taken to or to reside at Mar-a-Lago.”

Laufman, who was involved in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, said a Justice Department investigation would not focus just on Trump but also those who packed up the classified materials and moved them to Mar-a-Lago, and whether they knew what they were doing. He said the next step would be for the FBI to go to the secure facility where the documents were being stored, review the markings for themselves, and then “to broaden its investigation to learn how these documents came to be taken from the White House to Mar-a-Lago and whether anybody associated with that bears potential criminal liability.”

Former presidents do sometimes receive and hold on to classified information, according to people familiar with presidential records. For example, former presidents might receive classified briefing documents in advance of a meeting with a foreign leader. But they are supposed to carefully safeguard such documents, keeping them in a safe or other secure facility.

If a record has been labeled “top secret,” federal rules spell out a procedure for their handling and for any effort to declassify them. Often the information does not originate from the White House but from another agency.

In the past, when there has been discussion of declassifying a military or intelligence record, the originating agency is consulted about whether a document should be declassified. The rules also require that declassified documents be marked visibly as “declassified.”

One added wrinkle to the questions swirling around the Trump records is that while he was president, Trump frequently stayed at Mar-a-Lago and handled official documents while there, meaning it could be difficult in some instances to establish the chain of custody of specific classified documents.

The concern that the former president or his inner circle may have brought classified documents to an unsecure location provides a potential line of political attack for critics of Trump, who during the 2016 campaign repeatedly railed against Clinton for her handling of classified material and insisted she should be in jail. The FBI investigated Clinton for possibly mishandling classified information in connection with her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

Investigators found 110 emails that contained classified information at the time they were sent or received in the group of 30,000 that Clinton later turned over for review, including eight email chains that contained information that was “top secret” at the time they were sent. But the Justice Department ultimately decided not to charge Clinton, after the FBI determined they could not prove she intended to mishandle sensitive material.

Some analysts said Trump could now find himself in the crosshairs of a similar probe. But others urged caution.

“There are just a ton of unknowns here,” Van Grack said. “So part of this is, people just need to not jump to conclusions.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I figured the Lincoln Project would make a video when I heard about TFG trying to flush documents in the WH:

 

[GreyhoundFan]