THE REDACTED AFFIDAVIT IS A TORPEDO AMIDSHIPS THE SS TRUMP

When U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart initially indicated he was disposed to unsealing the affidavit accompanying the search warrant executed at former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, former prosecutors and legal experts were surprised, to put it mildly.

It may turn out that Judge Reinhart, who was very knowledgeable about the affidavit, having been the one who studied it for sufficiency and permitted issuance of a search warrant after so doing, may have the last laugh. Knowing what was in it, he had a good idea of what could be released.

He may well have thought to himself, “Be careful what you ask for, Mr. Trump.”

Because what was released today turns out to be another torpedo amidships to the SS Trump. Yes, there are no names, no sources, no methods listed.

But there is a history of mendacity, menace, obfuscation and outright truculence on the part of Ze Donald as demonstrated in the litany of letters and other attempts by the National Archives and Records Administration to get him to return the stolen property of the United States he had absconded with.

It’s a history that demonstrates his usual defense of “I’m such an idiot, I couldn’t possibly have known what I took” won’t work, since he was intimately involved with all the negotiations.

But the news that Trump handled the documents himself removes deniability and his ability to blame someone else for the mishandling of the records.

The heavily-redacted affidavit confirms that Former President of the United States (FPOTUS) Trump’s possession of highly classified documents, and presidential records, and possible obstruction is being investigated by federal law enforcement under the Presidential Records Act, which requires that all documents need to remain in federal custody regardless of classification level.

The filing, which was written by an unidentified FBI agent “trained in counterintelligence and espionage,” states agents suspected Trump of hiding intelligence information relating to signals collection, human sources, and other top secret information.

Signals collection and human sources are The Most Secret of our Secrets.

The 15 boxes Trump finally returned to the archives in January was the start of the suspicion orf the crimes in progress, the affidavit said.

Agents discovered 184 “unique documents bearing classification markings, including 67 documents marked as CONFIDENTIAL, 92 documents marked as SECRET, and 25 documents marked as TOP SECRET,” per the affidavit.

That included markings referencing human sources, FISA, records to be kept away from foreign nationals, and signal intelligence.

“Several of the documents also contained what appears to be FPOTUS ‘s handwritten notes,” the filing reads. (FPOTUS refers to the “Former President of the United States,” a term Lardo hates because it confirms his status as a Known Loser)

The affidavit cites public records and statements that demonstrate the National Archives spent more than one year after Trump fled Washington for Florida in January 2021, trying fruitlessly to regain control of the records. Trump refused and only handed over the 15 boxes, without a complete list of the records he was returning, in January 2022.

The affidavit lays out the timeline of these negotiations clearly.

One paragraph in the affidavit, titled “Boxes Containing Documents Were Transported from the White House to Mar-a-Lago,” cites a January 2021 CBS Miami article. titled “Moving Trucks Spotted at Mar-a-Lago,” describing two moving trucks at the club on Jan. 18, 2021.

NARA first asked for the return of the presidential records on May 6, 2021, but didn’t get any until much, much later.

After a year of negotiations, in February 2022, the National Archives finally received one tranche of records from Trump, in the form of the 15 boxes of documents and other items.

On Feb. 9, a NARA official emailed the DOJ saying that it had found “a lot of classified records” in the boxes, remarking that “highly classified records were unfoldered, intermixed with other records, and otherwise unproperly identified.”

Following the discovery of the classified information in those boxes, NARA referred the matter to the FBI. The FBI opened an investigation in February based on the referral.

As things heated up, Trump attorney Evan Corcoran sent a letter to DOJ counterintelligence chief Jay Bratt on May 25, in which he demanded to be included in any government motion before a judge regarding the case. The letter observes that “public trust in government is low.”

“President Donald J. Trump is a leader of the Republican Party. The Department of Justice (DOJ), as part of the Executive Branch, is under the control of a President from the opposite party. It is critical, given that dynamic, that every effort is made to ensure that actions by DOJ that may touch upon the former President, or his close associates, do not involve politics.”

The point is repeated several other ways in the letter, all but saying explicitly that Trump will treat any overt move in the investigation as political.

For Trump, who spent four years effectively immune from federal prosecution, who argued he was immune from criminal and congressional investigation, who wielded the federal law enforcement apparatus for his own ends, the letter is as much a reflection of the power he no longer has as it is an example of the kind of threat he’s willing to make.

On June 8, 2022, federal prosecutors sent a formal letter to Trump’s attorneys, demanding they preserve records that were still held at Mar-a-Lago:

“As I previously indicated to you, Mar-a-Lago does not include a secure location authorized for the storage of classified information. As such, it appears that since the time classified documents were removed from the secure facilities at the White House and moved to Mar-a-Lago on or around January 20, 2021, they have not been handled in an appropriate manner or stored in an appropriate location,” reads an excerpt of the letter included in the affidavit. “Accordingly, we ask that the room at Mar-a-Lago where the documents had been stored be secured and that all of the boxes that were moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago (along with any other items in that room) be preserved in that room in their current condition until further notice.”

Bratt, the counterintelligence official, included Corcoran’s letter in the search warrant application. It didn’t sway Judge Reinhart.

Released portions of the affidavit specify both where in Mar-a-Lago the search was to be conducted and what agents were meant to seek. These included Mar-a-Lago’s storage room, Trump’s “residential suite,” an area called Pine Hall, and another location only referred to as “45 Office,” along with anywhere else in the beachside club and home that “are not currently authorized locations for the storage of classified information or NDI.”

Agents were authorized to search for four categories of records: any documents or boxes with classification markings showing, any information or communications about moving classified or national defense information, any presidential records from Trump’s term, and any evidence of altering or destroying presidential records.

Over the past week, it has been reported that, in total, the government has recovered more than 300 documents with classified markings from Mr. Trump since he left office. The sheer number of documents previously recovered and their sources (from the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency) raise the stakes considerably for Trump, undercutting his followers’ frivolous excuses and ludicrous accusations of an FBI plot to persecute him. That the followers understand this is demonstrated by their resounding silence this past week after the revelation of the search warrant and the list of what was taken.

Even more incriminating was the Times’ report that Trump went through the boxes himself in late 2021. Clearly, this means he was aware of the contents and could view the classification markings. If the FBI and Justice Department are looking for evidence of Trump’s direct knowledge of the materials and willful refusal to return all of them, this would fit the bill.

The affidavit also confirmed the reports that the (DOJ) subpoenaed video footage from Mar-a-Lago over a 60-day period, “including views from outside the storage room.”That video footage revealed that during the time in which Justice Department officials were in contact with Mr. Trump’s team, boxes were moved in and out of the room.

The affidavit is a stunning example of intransigence, mendacity, lying and truculence from Trump (what else would we expect?) and the lengths to which the government went to try and work with him before concluding they were forced to go to Mar-A-Largo to investigate and retrieve the records.

After years of investigations into Trump and his inner circle, this investigation may have already come the closest to putting him squarely in the crosshairs of prosecution without any way out.

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