Ten Takeaways from the Trump Indictment

So, having read the new indictment, here are ten thoughts on the matter, always with the caveat that I Am Not A Lawyer:

• This indictment completely destroys the talking point that Trump declassified these documents with his mind. He is on tape admitting that these documents are classified and top secret, confessing that he can no longer declassify them and … showing them to unauthorized people anyway. There’s a boastful aspect to it, like a high school gossip saying, “I really shouldn’t tell you this, but …” He knew that what he was doing was illegal.
• One of the reasonable arguments made in Trump’s defense was that the government has a tendency to over-classify documents, to declare way too many mundane documents to be classified or top secret. This indictment also destroys that talking point. The documents included plans for attacking countries if we needed to and other critical national defense information.
• The indictment shows, with pictures, how sloppy Trump was about this. Top secret documents were stored in bathrooms. In public ballrooms. In storage rooms that had no lock. At one point, an employee walked into a storage room to find a stack of boxes had fallen, spilling top secret information on the floor of an unlocked room.
• Public records do not belong to the President. But these were more than White House records. They included records from the CIA, DOD and other agencies which are the government’s records, not the President’s.
• Once NARA began demanding the return of the records, things got worse. Trump tried to get his lawyer to just lie to NARA.
• Failing that, he allowed his lawyer to go through the boxes to find classified info to return. But he had Walt Nauta hide half of the boxes so that classified documents remained in Mar-A-Lago. The entire thing reads like a Scooby Doo caper, with Nauta wheeling boxes all over Mar-A-Lago or Trump loading them on a plane to Bedminster, trying to keep them away from his own attorney. No wonder two of them quit this week.
• Speaking of Nauta, he is completely hosed. He lied all over the place, hid boxes, lied to the attorneys and was at the center of the coverup. In the end, I expect most of this to fall on him and very little to fall on Trump himself. Also hosed may be “Trump Attorney 3” (apparently Christina Bobb) who signed off on a statement about the records that she had no knowledge of.
• There is no denying any of this. It’s all documented. The people who ran out to defend Donald Trump are finding, as people who defend Donald Trump always find, that the limb has been sawed out from under them.
• The thing that jumps out at me is … there was no reason for any of this. Trump wasn’t selling secrets. He wasn’t using them to embarrass his enemies. He wasn’t concealing damning info about his time in the White House. He did this because … he could. This has been the pattern of his time in politics; breaking rules and laws not as part of some vast conspiracy but because he wants to. For the sheer bloody hell of it.
• All the above being said, the people crowing “But her e-mails”, including Clinton herself (now apparently selling merch with that slogan), need to shut the hell up. Trump’s malfeasance does not excuse Clinton’s admittedly lesser misdeeds. She conducted public business on a private server to avoid FOIA and then wiped some of that data. Maybe it’s not criminal; but it was also unacceptable.

I have no idea where we go from here. We are in uncharted waters. No former President has ever been indicted (thanks to President Ford). No major candidate running for office has been under indictment. And we’ve never seen a political cult like that of Donald Trump, where his supporters will stick with him rather than dumping him like a 270 pound lipoma, as they should. At this point, the cries of witch hunt don’t really work, although I’m sure they will be made. It comes down to people not caring that he broke the law, broke it repeatedly, broke it deliberately and broke it flagrantly.

In fact, the GOP base seems to actually like Trump’s law breaking. Every time he is indicted or loses a civil suit, his support solidifies. Every time some awful revelation comes out, pundits joke that he’s clinched the nomination. I guess once you’ve decided an attempt coup is not disqualifying, this sort of stuff doesn’t even rate.

But the result here: Trump’s constant violation of the law and the relentless cult of personality within the GOP are now on a collision course. Buckle up. It’s going to get much worse out there.

OK, one last thing:



Boxes of records, including classified and secret info, stored in a bathroom at Mar-A-Lago.

Who puts a chandelier in the bathroom?