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The search of the two Trump properties was carried out in response to a grand jury subpoena ordering Trump to hand over all classified materials. However, with what has happened in the past, it seems absolutely ridiculous that anyone at the federal court, DOJ, FBI, or National Archives would trust the results of this search. In fact, it was an absolute breakdown in any trust of Trump’s legal team that caused Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell to authorize an FBI to search at Mar-a-Lago in the first place.
The lesson that Trump and all members of his staff have learned—not just this year, and not just in this case, but over decades, on topics from money laundering to charity fraud—is that there is rarely, if ever, a serious personal penalty involved in lying to the government. So why not lie? Besides, if those “search teams” did happen to stumble across any document stamped Top Secret, Trump could always just claim he had already declassified it. Then his attorneys could carry on reporting that they found nothing classified. Back to step one.
The Trump team has certainly had plenty of time to conduct their search/cover-up since that grand jury subpoena was issued all the way back in May. The only possible response now is to simply have the DOJ request new search warrants and follow this up themselves.
Of course, it’s entirely likely that they will not find any classified documents—after all, if the outside team conducted an actual search, that would be an excellent time to box up any documents found and move them somewhere else. However, the search still has to be done. Otherwise, the courts are sending a clear message of, “Hey, we know you hid massive amounts of stolen property and repeatedly lied about giving it back, and we know that some things are still missing, but we’re just going to trust you when you say you don’t have them.”
Honestly, hiding or destroying this material should be a snap. The fact that such large quantities of highly classified materials were found in Mar-a-Lago in the first place was entirely due to Trump’s endless supply of hubris—he wanted those nuclear secrets close, where he could use them to underline what a big deal he was to people who stepped into his office to schedule a golf outing. Ten minutes of actual thought would have placed those documents where they could not be found, but that would require putting ego aside, and Trump couldn’t manage that.
Are there more classified documents at Bedminister and Trump Tower? We don’t know. We didn’t know before this “search,” and we still don’t. But we can be absolutely sure that this search by Team Trump was an absolute waste of time and an insult to everyone seeking justice.
With the Republican Party gearing up to take the majority in the 2023 Congressional term, the disarray they have been experiencing the past six years is now at Keystone Cops-level hilarity. Markos and Kerry speak with Daily Kos Senior Staff Writer Joan McCarter. Joan covers the Congress day-in and day-out, and has done so for a decade. She gives Markos and Kerry an enjoyable blow-by-blow of the Republican mud wrestling match going on right now.
