I DO NOT HAVE MY HAND IN THAT COOKIE JAR - AND IF I DO, IT'S MINE ANYWAY.

Once again, the dumbest permanent 10 year old in the country is claiming that, despite having been caught once again with both hands in the cookie jar, that he not only does not have his hands in the cookie jar, but there is no cookie jr, and besides, he has a perfect right to have the cookies anyway since it’s obviously his cookie jar.

Yesterday, defeated former president Trump went on long-time right wing hack Hugh Hewitt's radio show where he claimed that he had “verbally declassified” the government records he took with him to Mar-a-Lago.

This is an assertion that his attorneys have avoided making in the litigation around the FBI's seizure of the materials, since they are not interested in being sanctioned for promoting lies and engaging in illegal activities.

Previously, former White House aide Kash Patel, claimed in an interview with Breitbart “News” that he witnessed Trump giving a verbal order to declassify the documents taken to Mar-a-Lago and that the documents involved the Russia probe, the Ukraine impeachment proceedings and "major national security matters of great public importance."\

When asked about that, Trump responded, "That's correct. And not only that, I think it was other people also were there. But I have the absolute right to declassify, absolute -- a president has that absolute right, and a lot of people aren't even challenging that anymore." He went on to say later in the interview that "everything was declassified."

However, eighteen former officials in Trump’s administration have stated on the record last month that they were aware of no such declassification order and that they believed Trump’s claims to be patently false.

Outside of Trump’s assertion regarding the cookie jar, there is no evidence that he took any action to declassify the documents, and when documents were returned from Mar-A-Largo in January and in May, he made no claims of having declassified any of them.

While Trump's attorneys sought in their most recent court filing to cast doubt that the 100-plus documents with classification markings that the FBI seized last month are in fact classified, they made no outright statement he actually did so.

In its court filing on Tuesday, the Justice Department detailed the absence of any such assertion made by Trump's legal team in court, arguing that, even if he did declassify the documents, it would still be irrelevant to the legal dispute over the search since the Presidential Records Act clearly states that all documents, whether classified or not are the property of the United States government.

None of the criminal statutes the Justice Department cited when applying for the search warrant used to search Mar-a-Largo involved the documents in question being classified.

During the interview, Trump went on to say he did not believe he would be indicted

When asked if he had received a target letter from the DOJ in connection with the probe into the fake electors plot, Trump said he had not, nor had he been asked to appear before the grand jury.

"I wasn't involved with alternate slates," Trump said.

That claim that has been contradicted by testimony given in the House's January 6 investigation, where RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel testified that Trump called her as part of the effort to use fake electors to support him.

In fact, there is no procedure for a President to “verbally declassify” documents. There are written and formal processes that must be gone through legally and be fully documented for a president to officially declassify a document.

Trump revealed how frightened he is when in answer to Hewitt’s question about a possible indictment, he threatened violence if he is indicted, saying:

“If it happened, I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps, we’ve never seen before. I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it.

“Nice little store you got here. Be a shame if something bad happened to it.”

Trump just threatened violence the way all gangs

ters make their threats of violence: indirectly.

Trump said that because he is frightened and knows he is cornered. If he had any legitimate defenses to all the investigations he’s now the target of, he would “truthing” from his Twiotter knock-up. Those 40 subpoenas issued in the last two weeks mean there is an increased likelihood that one of his minions will turn on him.

Despite Trump’s assertion that he does in fact have a right to have his hand in the cookie jar that doesn’t exist but it would be his cookie jar if he did, a president does not have an absolute right to declassify anything. The documents with the highest TS/SCI designations and the Human Intelligence documents can only be declassified through a panel review process in which the agencies that created the documents are involved in a formal written analysis regarding the effect of declassification and they must make a formal written agreement to such declassification before the act becomes final.

Trump won election as president knowing nothing about the operation of government or anything about the actual powers of the president beyond the completely-incorrect assertion that “I have the right to do anything,” and he resolutely failed to learn anything during his time in office.

Should we consider the threats of violence real threats? Should we be concerned?

Yes, the threat is real. Yes, we should be concerned. But let’s be realistic about the scale and scope of the threat. 74 million people voted for him in 2020 and 30,000 assaulted the capitol on January 6 - and not all of them actually went inside and carried out the assault.

Will there be scattered violent protests and an occasional lone wolf if he’s perp-walked in cuffs?

Yes. We have seen both already.

But Trump playing the Big Bad Wolf and threatening to blow our house down cannot be allowed to dissuade us.

As John Locke said, “Where the rule of law ends, tyranny begins.” If all it takes to lose the rule of law is to make threats about a violent response, then the rule of law is already

Our constitutional democratic republic is worth defending, particularly against a small-time bully who now realizes no one fears him. Trump is on the run.

That doesn’t mean he and the lifetime losers from Flyover Loserville who constitute the American Right cannot be dangerous. They are a threat, if enough people don’t stand up to be counted in November, their threat will be truly dangerous.

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