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[Split Thread] Trump Document indictment (as opposed to other indictments)

Checkmite

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Checkmite
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acbytesla said:
You very well may be right. But just because there isn't evidence of it doesn't mean Trump didn't do it. There are hundreds of documents missing including documents Trump bragged about having.
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Well, note the parenthetical I used. I don't think it's likely that Trump intended to give away or sell information to foreign governments, but that shouldn't minimalize the danger because Mar-a-Lago had to have been hosting agents from multiple foreign countries from the moment Trump's personal ambitions became apparent, because Trump is a notorious braggart and could be reliably depended upon to have loose lips. All it takes to get close to him even today is flashing a large enough wad of cash, and he is critically susceptible to flattery.

acbytesla said:
Obviously Trump constantly feels a deep seeded need to show off. But boxes and boxes just sat in various places throughout Mar a Lago and Trump didn’t appear to be looking at them. Which makes whatever reasoning he had to deliberately keep them when they were subpoenaed truly bizarre.
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I think by that point the fact that there was an investigation all by itself made Trump panic.

I think the fact that the documents were initially being stored in bathrooms and hallways and storage closets and wherever else they could fit, meant that early on Trump didn't particularly care what exactly he had or what was in them all that much. Once the word "subpoena" started floating around however, he became intensely interested in them, just because now they were a liability and he needed to know exactly which regions of his ass needed covering.


 
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Checkmite said:
Well, note the parenthetical I used. I don't think it's likely that Trump intended to give away or sell information to foreign governments, but that shouldn't minimalize the danger because Mar-a-Lago had to have been hosting agents from multiple foreign countries from the moment Trump's personal ambitions became apparent, because Trump is a notorious braggart and could be reliably depended upon to have loose lips. All it takes to get close to him even today is flashing a large enough wad of cash, and he is critically susceptible to flattery.
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Except Trump has proven he would sell his children if there was a dollar in it for him


Checkmite said:
I think by that point the fact that there was an investigation all by itself made Trump panic.

I think the fact that the documents were initially being stored in bathrooms and hallways and storage closets and wherever else they could fit, meant that early on Trump didn't particularly care what exactly he had or what was in them all that much. Once the word "subpoena" started floating around however, he became intensely interested in them, just because now they were a liability and he needed to know exactly which regions of his ass needed covering.
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NARA tried for months and months on end to retrieve the documents before they resorted to subpoenas.
 
acbytesla said:
NARA tried for months and months on end to retrieve the documents before they resorted to subpoenas.
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Trump has made a number of overseas trips in his crappy private jet since this all kicked off to "check how things are running there". And documents are STILL unaccounted for...
 
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Myriad said:
I'm considering the radical hypothesis that Trump took and then attempted to hold onto the documents because he wanted the documents. Not as "souvenirs" or because of orneriness but because he thought he could use them politically in some way, perhaps to embarrass someone he dislikes who's mentioned in them.

I doubt his motives will be particularly relevant to any court case, so we will likely never know.
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They've subpoenaed records of his business transactions with Saudi, Turkey and several other countries.
 
There is also audio of The Fat Orange Turd, recorded at Bedminster, that directly contradicts his claim that he had an absolute right to declassify documents, that he could do so just by thinking about it, and that they were automatically declassified when he took them....

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/09/...idnt-declassify-secret-information/index.html

"As president, I could have declassified, but now I can’t,"

"Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this. This was done by the military and given to me."

"They presented me this – this is off the record, but – they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him. We looked at some. This was him. This wasn't done by me, this was him."

"All sorts of stuff – pages long, look. Wait a minute, let's see here. I just found, isn't that amazing? This totally wins my case*, you know. Except it is like, highly confidential. Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this."​
*NOTE: To be clear, the "case" here refers to his dispute with Gen Mark Milley, and not the Federal Documents case.
 
Checkmite said:
This is a man who had fake Time covers of himself made up, framed, and hung prominently in his offices and personal spaces. His primary motivation in life is impressing people.

I see no evidence that he sold or even (intentionally) conveyed any of this information to foreign countries, or ever planned to. In my opinion, Trump kept them for no other reason than to do what he was caught on tape doing: showing them off to other people to try and impress them and/or win arguments.

This is, at a fundamental level, no different from that ANG analyst who leaked classified docs to his Discord buddies purely to prove that he had access to them.
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Indeed, Trump is a small little man trying to look big but too stupid to understand how to actually go about doing it.

Though I think he did also intend to also prpfit from his theft. At the very core of his soul Trump is a criminal and a grifter. There's no doubt in my mind that he thought he could pull it off. Remember, with small little men like Trump they also want to convince others they're the biggest, the best, the strongest and the smartest in the room and the first person they convince is themselves. And with Trump he doesn't have the brains to have that nagging little doubt in his mind, what Pratchett called Second Thoughts, which pulls one back from the brink if you listen.
 
Norman Alexander said:
Trump has no sense of propriety or rules. It's his crocodilian brain stem alone that rules him. It's all about him, right now, all the time. What we call cheating is to him getting the job done. To us, it's stealing nuclear secrets. To him, it's taking souvenirs.
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Remember, his business experience is that of a CEO. He is the boss and can do what he wants, and is not accountable to anyone.

That's his entire schtick.
 
lobosrul5 said:
The bathroom is pretty bizarre.
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Yeah, but given his propensity to flush incriminating documents down the toilet, that may just be his filing room.

Ordinary, to even low end windows and toilet... and then the super gaudy fixtures and mirror.
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Yeah...

I've had the displeasure of staying in a Trump property before (not at my expense). That's what you get: low-end trash painted gold. And the Trump groupies just all agree that it's the best thing they've ever seen.

And that's Trump in a nutshell. He's fundamentally just a small, insecure man who keeps classified documents as trophies to prove to other people just how very important he is. He has no substance, so he relies on various metaphorical gold paints.
 
JayUtah said:
I love how the higher-quality photos from the indictment shows what a run-down dump Mar-a-Lago is.
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The ballroom stage photo shows that Trump is one of those people who doesn't know when to stop decorating. It's uncanny how much it looks like the inside of a Trinity Broadcasting Network preacher's house, or even one of their stage sets. It's a perfect metaphor for his personality - a gaudy, ostentatious, pretentious façade covering a hollow shell of garbage.
 
pgwenthold said:
Remember, his business experience is that of a CEO. He is the boss and can do what he wants, and is not accountable to anyone.

That's his entire schtick.
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Yeah, the whole 'walking off with classified documents and showing them to anyone he wants' is just an extension of his "grab 'em by the pussy" attitude toward any limitations.
 
I have a big question: seems a good part of the indictment is based on statements made by Trump's lawyers to the investigators. Isn't all of that protected by attorney client privilege? Can't Trump's attorneys now have all that evidence stricken from The trial? If a suspect knew that his attorney could testify against him why would he ever admit to anything to his attorneys anymore?
 
Hercules56 said:
I have a big question: seems a good part of the indictment is based on statements made by Trump's lawyers to the investigators. Isn't all of that protected by attorney client privilege? Can't Trump's attorneys now have all that evidence stricken from The trial? If a suspect knew that his attorney could testify against him why would he ever admit to anything to his attorneys anymore?
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If the statements are part of an illegal action, they're not protected.
 
Hercules56 said:
I have a big question: seems a good part of the indictment is based on statements made by Trump's lawyers to the investigators. Isn't all of that protected by attorney client privilege? Can't Trump's attorneys now have all that evidence stricken from The trial? If a suspect knew that his attorney could testify against him why would he ever admit to anything to his attorneys anymore?
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Link to a more in depth explanation on a major exception -

The Crime-Fraud Exception to the Attorney-Client Privilege
Not all attorney-client communications are privileged.


The crime-fraud exception applies if:

- the client was in the process of committing or intended to commit a crime or fraudulent act, and
- the client communicated with the lawyer with intent to further the crime or fraud, or to cover it up.
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In short, no, the evidence should not be able to be stricken from the trial here.

ETA: As for why they'd communicate with attorneys... at last check, the official purpose of attorneys has always been to uphold justice by making sure that their clients are correctly advised about legal matters and represented by those knowledgeable and capable. That this purpose is frequently subverted in practice doesn't mean that we should be accepting of the subversion.
 
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pgwenthold said:
Remember, his business experience is that of a CEO. He is the boss and can do what he wants, and is not accountable to anyone.

That's his entire schtick.
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The vast majority of the far richer and more powerful CEO's who could buy themselves a couple of small countries each year don't behave that badly. Sure, they have lifestyles of the rich and famous, mega-liners and fleets of private jets. But they probably don't buy the presidency of the USA and stash stolen state secrets in the loo.
 
Checkmite said:
... I see no evidence that he sold or even (intentionally) conveyed any of this information to foreign countries, or ever planned to. ....
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A'hem, regarding no evidence:

Just after Trump took office in 2017 Kushner (and Trump in a separate visit) went to Saudi Arabia. Shortly thereafter Prince Kashogi-murderer purged the royal conglomerate of perceived threats to his power. Speculation is Kushner (with information Trump gave him) passed on CIA collected data about those threats.

Just after Trump lost the 2020 election, Prince Kashogi-murderer gave Kushner 2 billion dollars laundered through a supposed investment fund.

Your claim there is no evidence, maybe you should change that to no current actionable evidence we have clear proof of.
 
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Myriad said:
... Not as "souvenirs" or because of orneriness but because he thought he could use them politically in some way, perhaps to embarrass someone he dislikes who's mentioned in them....
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Not mutually exclusive motives.

I think we can consider the overall purpose of him keeping any of these documents would have been his idea he could use them as an extension of the power he felt as POTUS: Bragging, revenge, and trading for gain of some kind., not necessarily in that order.
 
JayUtah said:
I love how the higher-quality photos from the indictment shows what a run-down dump Mar-a-Lago is.
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The previous owner, Marjorie Post, made it into her mansion away from Washington. She was very particular about doing style well, and had the fortune to afford the best. Apparently Trump had the good stuff ripped out when he bought and renovated the place. This is the same place that Trump valued at over $750 million when it was really worth less than $75 million.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar-a-Lago
 
Checkmite said:
Well, note the parenthetical I used. I don't think it's likely that Trump intended to give away or sell information to foreign governments, ...
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Even people who are not Trump supporters are reluctant to think the worst of him. Hard to believe even an evil person would have such a motive but Trump? Why not? We've seen with direct evidence he is that bad. No need to pull speculative punches.


Checkmite said:
I think the fact that the documents were initially being stored in bathrooms and hallways and storage closets and wherever else they could fit, meant that early on Trump didn't particularly care what exactly he had or what was in them all that much. Once the word "subpoena" started floating around however, he became intensely interested in them, just because now they were a liability and he needed to know exactly which regions of his ass needed covering.
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I can't be the only person who was shocked to see he had that many boxes.
 
Hercules56 said:
I have a big question: seems a good part of the indictment is based on statements made by Trump's lawyers to the investigators. Isn't all of that protected by attorney client privilege? Can't Trump's attorneys now have all that evidence stricken from The trial? If a suspect knew that his attorney could testify against him why would he ever admit to anything to his attorneys anymore?
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Attorney client privilege doesn't protect a client as well as many people think. There is something called the crime fraud exception. An attorney cannot help a client hiding a crime. In fact, they are duty bound as an officer of the court to report it. Ninja'd big time!
 
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Reports say that about 100 documents are classified. He has thousands more that are not classified. I think I read that on CNN.
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
Indeed, Trump is a small little man trying to look big but too stupid to understand how to actually go about doing it.
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Really? Just because a lot of us see him as that whiny baby in diapers doesn't mean he hasn't successfully accomplished making himself look spectacularly bigly. Some in his cult even see him as akin to Jesus.


Gulliver Foyle said:
Though I think he did also intend to also prpfit from his theft. At the very core of his soul Trump is a criminal and a grifter. There's no doubt in my mind that he thought he could pull it off. Remember, with small little men like Trump they also want to convince others they're the biggest, the best, the strongest and the smartest in the room and the first person they convince is themselves. And with Trump he doesn't have the brains to have that nagging little doubt in his mind, what Pratchett called Second Thoughts, which pulls one back from the brink if you listen.
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I agree with the bolded part but I think he vacillates between his ego hitting rock bottom and rising above the clouds on a regular basis.
 
William Parcher said:
Reports say that about 100 documents are classified. He has thousands more that are not classified. I think I read that on CNN.
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Yeah, I think it was altogether a couple hundred classified documents; but in any case, those stacks and stacks of boxes are not full of classified docs, rather that the ones he had were scattered throughout them haphazardly.

The exception is probably the boxes that were photographed being taken aboard Trump's private jet. It seems to be alleged that those specifically were classified docs that Trump had selected and was taking away from Mar-a-Lago in order to hide them from his own attorney's search.
 
GlennB said:
Images of a huge number of boxes stashed at Mar-a-lago

The Guardian

No suggestion as to what's in them, mind :)
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Next to the toilet, no less.

Skeptic Ginger said:
Not mutually exclusive motives.

I think we can consider the overall purpose of him keeping any of these documents would have been his idea he could use them as an extension of the power he felt as POTUS: Bragging, revenge, and trading for gain of some kind., not necessarily in that order.
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Plus, it looks like he's a hoarder to some extent.
 
trump often referred to Mar-a-Lago as an "armed fort."

trump even 'truthed': "What I did was RIGHT, Secured documents in a secured place!"

[IMGW=300]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=1457&pictureid=13521[/IMGW]

MAGA!!!
 
So apparently the defense is going to be that he considers them "personal records" and therefore is allowed to keep them, based on precedent from Clinton.

Of course, there are problems with that claim.
1) It's hard to argue that classified documents are his personal papers
2) The grand jury was presented with that defense and basically laughed it out of the room
3) the National Archives have created an FAQ explaining why it's all nonsense and that there are clear criteria for what constitutes personal papers
4) I thought they were planted by the fbi? No wait, he declassified them? Oh, it's that he is allowed to have them?
 
JayUtah said:
38 counts, devastating.

Having formerly had access myself to classified documents and information, I really think this will not go well. If convicted, it's highly unlikely he will avoid a custodial sentence.
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Those Secret Service agents are not going to like sitting in a Cell with Trump, Mitch McConnell should have Impeached him.
 
Apparently trump's base is reaching the boiling point. MSN reports on a story that appeared on Raw Story:
  • “We need to start killing these traitorous f---stains,” wrote one person on the the pro-Trump messaging board, The Donald.
  • “It's not gonna stop until bodies start stacking up. We are not civilly represented anymore and they'll come for us next. Some of us, they already have," wrote another.
  • Another person shared an article about Attorney General Merrick Garland's family, prompting one user to reply, “His children are fair game as far as I’m concerned.”
MSN news link
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Congressman Andy Biggs agrees, as he tweeted. And on his official Congressional Twitter account no less!

[IMGW=400]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=1457&pictureid=13523[/IMGW]

MAGA!!!
 
Of all the adventures outlined in the indictment, I think I've decided that my favorite is how Trump and his Top Men spent days going through the boxes culling and moving the classified documents in advance of the planned audit by the attorney, leaving only a couple dozen behind for the attorney to find, and then when the attorney finds them, Trump actually has the nerve to ask him if he found anything too problematic. "What's it look like, is it good or bad?"
 
This is just the beginning. I'm betting Trump is going to be indicted on many more charges. There is still January 6th. There is election interference. I bet Fani Willis will indict Trump in Georgia by the end of June.
 
The type of documents sound like something an uninformed person like Trump would think some foreign power would want to buy.

It's basically movie -type espionage stuff, not what Russia, China or the Saudis are really after.
 
The sentence in this case will probably be much worse than in the Jan 6th case - even though it should be the other way around.

Reason being that in the run-up to the insurrection and on that day, Trump actually was President (unlike during most crimes in the Documents case); and Courts are extremely reluctant to punish a President for what they did in Office.
Republican Presidents, that is.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
The type of documents sound like something an uninformed person like Trump would think some foreign power would want to buy.

It's basically movie -type espionage stuff, not what Russia, China or the Saudis are really after.
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I don't think we know that. We have no idea the depth and extent of the documents Trump had. There were classified documents that even the jury will not see.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=dGvqxrnS5vU&feature=share9
 
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