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

Checkmite

Skepticifimisticalationist
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.
 
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