I assume he wanted to still be able to use nuclear weapons even when out of office.
Just remembered that the event where Trump's aide runs off with the nuclear football to restrain him from doing anything crazy is in Jeffrey Lewis's novel, not reality. As far as we know.
I sure hope this isn't overreach - like, I've heard speculation that Trump kept the card with the nuclear codes after leaving office, but those codes are changed the instant a new president is inaugurated. Something like that where it will be popularly understood as a souvenir or a paperwork error would be bad, both because it would be dismissed and because it would show that they didn't have anything better to throw at him.
I wouldn't worry about overreach to that degree. That sort of thing is definitely going to be the sort of defense Trump's surrogates rely on -- that whatever it was it was stupid and pointless for it to have been classified -- but it seems vanishingly unlikely to me that the only thing going on here is a genuinely objectively unimportant souvenir.
Honestly, I don't know anything at all about security or nuclear codes or anything, and I can think of reasons that an obsolete code should still be highly classified. But I really doubt what he had will be limited to an obsolete code.
A plausible suggestion I heard was that, like an impulsive vain 8-year-old, he took nuclear stuff so he could brag to the other rich buddies at Mar a Lago (or whoever it was he wanted to impress). "Check this out!"
I think he assumed he'd have a second term to kill a lot of people, feels cheated of that, and took documents he thought would help him achieve his goal.
I don't think anyone said it was nuclear codes. Information about nuclear weapons - maybe the instructions for how to use the football? That would be quite sensitive and revealing.
Or something completely different like a picture book they made for him about all the different kinds of nuclear weapons.
5 would be consistent with a Secret Service agent being in a position to notice. If it were pure "I'm going to keep and exploit certain documents" I credit Trump with the ability to put it in a locked drawer. He got where he is today by burying or destroying key evidence.
My prediction is that it turns out that it's something genuinely important, but that there's little reason to think Trump Sr. specifically was involved in choosing to take that particular document or in any shenanigans around the document. For example, Jared Kushner was paid $2bn (yes b-billion) by the Saudis for *something*. The typical scenario that's been repeated multiple times in the Trump admin is that someone close to Trump is an agent of a foreign government, and Trump either doesn't know or doesn't care, but isn't directly implicated. He then covers up for their crimes (say by firing the FBI director for investigating his NSA who was working for Turkey) for the Mafia-type reasons that covering up for crimes is instinct for him and because he considers investigating his friends as disloyalty.
Her Majesty asked me why he would do that and my only answer was "He's the scum of the earth."
Her Majesty asked me why he would do that and my only answer was "He's the scum of the earth."
Just as one example, it's very plausible that Jared would be passing along intelligence about the Iranian nuclear program to the Saudis in a way that reveals sources and methods. Republicans would then say its no big deal because the Saudis are our allies and Iran is our enemy.
When is the earliest the warrant could be unsealed?
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Holy shit. In other breaking news Salmon Rushdieas attacked. I wonder if he'll go into hiding again if he recovers.
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12: If Trump really isn't opposing the government's motion it could be unsealed at any time. 3 pm today is just the deadline for them to tell the Court.
It's 3:04 EST - where are the secrets!!!???
I think the warrant's been released by Trump through Breitbart and the WSJ, but it doesn't say much about the content of the seized documents.
Non-Breitbart link: https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/12/politics/read-search-warrant-trump-mar-a-lago/index.html
The three sections of penal code the warrant describes investigating are now the top three Google autocomplete results after "18 USC".
18 USC 793: Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information (includes both delivering information to anyone not entitled to receive it, and "willfully retain[ing] the same and fail[ing] to deliver it on demand" to the government)
18 USC 2071: Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally (doesn't seem to require it being classified or defense information)
18 USC 1519: Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy (basically obstruction of justice by document)
New rumors about the contents of the documents: https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-trump-raid-documents-could-reveal-intel-sources-us-payroll-1733230
22: I'm going to believe that's what saved him.