Patron saint of “Sir” stories files a filing
Lawsuits, legal delaying tactics, and claims of persecution are standard Donald Trump moves. Nothing has changed since he left office.
Maggie Haberman, Jodi Kantor, et al. reveal that in the first tranche of documents the National Archives reclaimed from the former president’s Palm Beach club included over 150 classified documents. Their presence “in the wild” triggered Department of Justice concerns and a criminal investigation that led to an F.B.I. search for more. Government officials recovered more than 300 documents from Mar-a-Lago:
And the extent to which such a large number of highly sensitive documents remained at Mar-a-Lago for months, even as the department sought the return of all material that should have been left in government custody when Mr. Trump left office, suggested to officials that the former president or his aides had been cavalier in handling it, not fully forthcoming with investigators, or both.
The specific nature of the sensitive material that Mr. Trump took from the White House remains unclear. But the 15 boxes Mr. Trump turned over to the archives in January, nearly a year after he left office, included documents from the C.I.A., the National Security Agency and the F.B.I. spanning a variety of topics of national security interest, a person briefed on the matter said.
Mr. Trump went through the boxes himself in late 2021, according to multiple people briefed on his efforts, before turning them over.
Trump took them. He had them. He knew he had them, and he did not return them all when asked.
Federal magistrate judge Bruce E. Reinhart directed federal officials to propose redactions to the sealed affidavit supporting the F.B.I. search warrant.
Trump now demands in a filing that the court appoint a special master to separate materials he considers covered by executive- or attorney-client privilege (elsewhere in New York Times):
The motion, which was filled with bombastic complaints about the search — “The government has long treated President Donald J. Trump unfairly,” it said at one point — also asked the Justice Department to provide an “informative receipt” of what was taken from Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s home and club in Florida, on Aug. 8. His lawyers wrote that the inventory left at the property by the agents who conducted the search was “legally deficient” and did “little to identify” the seized material.
If the judge who received the motion, Aileen M. Cannon, appoints a special master in the case, it will almost certainly drag out the process of reviewing the multiple boxes of documents that were seized and slow down the government’s investigation into whether Mr. Trump obstructed a federal inquiry and wrongfully retained national defense documents.
Trump may have delaying tactics down cold, but the expert on everything has made himself a paradigm case of Dunning-Kruger incompetence, Kurt Eichenwald suggests after reviewing Trump’s court filing. He’s flabbergasted at how bad it is:
A sampling:
…the repeated use of the “That’s Not Fair” judicial standard (cite: Playground v Tantrum, 2022) the lack of citations for pretty much everything, the lack of fundamental things like affidavits to back the statements of facts, and on and on. But first: What the hell is it?…
…you don’t just run in and say “Appoint a special master!” It has to fall under some category of judicial procedure. Is this a preliminary motion for an injunction to halt the review of documents by the government, pending further motions? No clue.
Skipping over a question about venue that Eichenwald later in the thread believes he got wrong, he continues:
Trump clearly wrote huge portions of this, even though three lawyers signed it. There are repeated sections with “my” and “I” in it (like “my house”)…5
…now let’s get to the meat. The kinds of things that Trump provides without affidavit – in other words, something more like a tweet than serious legal filing – are like this: “One of the FBIagents said, ‘Thank you. You did not need to show us the storage room. I get it now”…6
…this, of course, has all the earmarks of one of Trump’s “they came up to me crying and said ‘Sir…'” tweets. It is meaningless garbage without an affidavit, and all of the statements of fact are like this. Now, their argument becomes utter nonsense. By the standard…7
…they invoke, there will no longer be confidential informants, evidence withheld prior to indictment – it will be a criminal free-for-all. Trump wants to argue for special rules based on the “But I’m Donald Trump!” standard (Malignant v. Narcissist, 2016).
The filing reads like a Trump rally speech. Contrary to Eichenwald, Marcy Wheeler believes much of the filing was written by Kash Patel (who did not sign it):
…next, the relatively few citations that Trump uses *are all misrepresented.* In fact, that is clear even in the limited quotes from precedent that Trump cites, and really makes you wonder if he truly does not know he is no longer president.
Trump and his attorneys fling anything and everything into the filing, including, writes Wheeler:
- A confession to a violation of the Espionage Act
- A confession to making a threat against the Attorney General
- A legal shit show
- Serial proof that a Trump search was conducted like other searches
- Filed in the wrong place at the wrong time
- Probably written in significant part by Kash Patel
- Not backed by sworn declarations to substantiate its “factual claims”
- An invocation not of special master reviews by Trump’s own personal attorneys but instead an invocation of a terrorist lawyer convicted of conspiring with that terrorist.
Wheeler writes, “One thing it is not is a significant Fourth Amendment filing.” (Trump promised one days ago.) “Trump couldn’t even manage that competently.” She left her own comments on the filing in a thread here.
Most Americans and Trump cult members are not paying this kind of attention. But what the court filing from his cut-rate lawyers further confirms is that Donald J. Trump doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. His Incompetence sucks at everything except criming. He has no business anywhere national security secrets or any levers of power, and never did. Trump has no regard for anything but the superficialities of legal conduct — when they suit his self-interest. Which now is primarily avoiding debts and keeping his sorry ass out of prison. He is a moral black hole.
Even Richard Nixon retained enough of a conscience and self-respect to know when it was time to slink away from the White House and shut the hell up. And you wouldn’t buy a used car from him. But the cult would.
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