https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-15-2024
"This morning, after a day of Republicans insisting that it is political
polarization to suggest that Trump is a danger to our democracy, U.S. District
Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump in the last days of his
presidency, dismissed the classified documents case against the former
president. She wrote that “Special Counsel Smith’s appointment violates the
Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution.”
Other federal courts have tested this argument and dismissed it, but Supreme
Court justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife Ginni was part of the attempt to
overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, suggested earlier this
month that it could be the basis for getting rid of Jack Smith. Cannon cited
Thomas repeatedly in her decision.
When he left office in January 2021, Trump took with him to Mar-a-Lago hundreds
of pages of classified national security documents, some of which bore the
highest level of classification. The National Archives and Records
Administration (NARA), where by law presidential papers must be deposited,
noted that many documents were missing from the materials Trump released to
them and, in May 2021, emailed Trump’s lawyers to get them back.
When his lawyers tried to push him to do as the law required, they told FBI
investigators, Trump answered: “It’s not theirs, it’s mine.” Finally, in
December 2021, after Trump had personally gone through the documents, a Trump
representative told NARA that they had found “some records,” and in January
2022, NARA retrieved 15 boxes from Mar-a-Lago. Archivists found more than 150
documents marked classified, making up hundreds of pages of classified national
security information.
By April the Justice Department had convened a grand jury to investigate
Trump’s removal of the documents. Trump’s lawyers tried to keep those documents
out of the hands of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) by claiming they
were covered by executive privilege, but in May 2022, NARA gave the FBI access
to the records. In June 2022, Trump representative Christina Bobb certified
that “a diligent search” at Mar-a-Lago had turned up nothing more and that they
were returning “any and all documents” they had found. Concerned about the
sheer number of documents turning up, the Department of Justice subpoenaed
security video tapes, which showed people moving the documents.
Federal officials obtained a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago. When they executed
it in August 2022, they found 13 more boxes with classified documents: a total
of more than 11,000 government documents and photographs. They also found 48
empty folders labeled “classified,” but they did not check a locked closet on
which Trump had recently changed the lock, or a “hidden room” in Trump’s
bedroom. They found that the boxes, which contained the most valuable
intelligence of the United States government, had been stored haphazardly in
public areas, including a ballroom stage and a bathroom."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
