One week ago, we learned an intriguing detail about the search of Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago: Along with the roughly 100 classified documents recovered, the government also found 48 folders with banners marked “classified” but which were nonetheless empty.
What we didn’t know was how significant the government considered that finding; the empty folders were merely listed on an inventory list.
On Thursday, though, the Justice Department served notice that the empty folders are of significant interest. And it argued that tracing them to specific classified documents is among the urgent reasons that its review should be allowed to continue….
Among the handful of reasons mentioned: the empty folders. And the Justice Department implies that it might indeed be able to use the folders to determine whether there are larger issues than Trump merely having possessed classified documents. Specifically, it cites the possibility that classified documents might have been “lost” or “compromised.”
“The FBI would be chiefly responsible for investigating what materials may have once been stored in these folders and whether they may have been lost or compromised — steps that, again, may require the use of grand jury subpoenas, search warrants, and other criminal investigative tools and could lead to evidence that would also be highly relevant to advancing the criminal investigation,” the DOJ’s filing states.
Later in the filing, the Justice Department again returns to the idea that classified documents might still be missing.
“In addition, the injunction against using classified records in the criminal investigation could impede efforts to identify the existence of any additional classified records that are not being properly stored — which itself presents the potential for ongoing risk to national security,” it says.
The idea that the government hasn’t recovered all classified documents is hardly far-fetched. Trump, after all, failed to return all the documents when they were subpoenaed months ago, even as his lawyer asserted that all requested documents had been returned, federal prosecutors said last month.
Republicans on the defensive?
David Siders at Politico: ‘The environment is upside down’: Why Dems are winning the culture wars.
It’s already the consensus that abortion is going to be a good issue for Democrats in November.
What’s only now becoming clear — as Republicans scrub their campaign websites of prior positions on abortion and labor to turn the focus of the midterms back to President Joe Biden and the economy — is just how much the issue is altering the GOP’s standard playbook.
For the first time in years, Republican and Democratic political professionals are preparing for a general election campaign in which Democrats — not Republicans — may be winning the culture wars, a wholesale reversal of the traditional political landscape that is poised to reshape the midterms and the run-up to 2024.
“The environment is upside down,” said Michael Brodkorb, a former deputy chair of the Minnesota Republican Party. “The intensity has been reversed.”
It isn’t just abortion. Less than 20 years after conservatives used ballot measures against same-sex marriage to boost voter turnout in 11 states, public sentiment has shifted on the issue so dramatically that Democrats are poised to force a vote on legislation to protect same-sex marriage to try to damage Republican candidates. Following the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Democrats from Georgia and Wisconsin to Illinois and California are running ads supporting gun restrictions, once viewed as a liability for the left, while openly engaging Republicans on crime.
In an advertising campaign shared with POLITICO, the center-left group Third Way said the PAC it launched last year to defend moderate Democrats, Shield PAC, will start spending at least $7 million next week on digital and mail ads in seven competitive House districts to counter Republican attacks on crime, immigration and other culture war issues.
The advertising push follows polling in Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s Virginia district that suggested counter-messaging by Democrats on public safety could blunt the effect of “defund the police” attacks by Republicans. As a result, while Spanberger is airing ads tearing into her Republican opponent on abortion, Shield PAC will be running a digital campaign bolstering Spanberger’s credentials on police funding.
Could Louisiana Senator Foghorn Leghorn be waking up to the notion that culture wars aren’t going his way and reverting back to his former self? Raw Story: GOP senator helps confirm Black Biden judicial nominee after his colleague’s racist attack.
On Thursday, POLITICO reported that Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) broke ranks with his Republican colleagues to help confirm Andre Mathis to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit — the first Black man to be confirmed to that court in nearly a quarter century.
“Mathis did so by one vote, clearing the Senate 48-47 with Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) breaking from his party to give the nominee the votes,” said the report. “If Mathis’ nomination failed, Democrats would’ve had to bring it up again — burning valuable floor time during a time crunch before the midterms.”
The report continued: “When asked why he voted for the Biden-appointed nominee, Kennedy told reporters: ‘He did a great job in committee, in my opinion. He’s a partner at Butler Snow, which is a major national law firm. The criminal record that they talked about, that he forgot to face some traffic tickets, when they contacted him about it through a warrant, he just said, ‘It’s true, I forgot to pay them,’ and he paid up, but I just didn’t think that was disqualifying.”
athis’ unpaid traffic tickets were a point of contention for other Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) provoked controversy when she interrogated Mathis over the tickets, referring to them as a “rap sheet.”
“The conservative Kennedy rarely diverges from his party,” noted the report. “His vote only proved decisive with three Democratic senators out of office due to Covid — Sens. Jon Ossoff (Ga.), Jacky Rosen (Nev.), and Bob Menendez (N.J.)
I’m going to end there, and I’ll see you in the comments. Have a great Friday and a fantastic weekend!!
The scary candidate for PA Governor:
So it never occurred to Repubs that forcing their voters into birthing the ‘domestic supply of infants’ might cause a spot of anger?
They seem to forget how much pretending women have to do just to survive, and how used to it they are, and how the Repub BS was just background noise they’d work around with a smile pasted on their faces. Until it wasn’t.
I think younger women took these rights for granted and now they are waking up to what we old folks have been warning them about.
Yes, indeed. Every time I really think about it, I boggle that anyone has to physically fall off the cliff before they think, “Wait. Walking off the end there. That would be bad.”
Yes, the lack of awareness is hard to believe. OTOH, their scorn for “old women” is telling. Those old women Baby Boomers were the ones protesting and working to get women the rights, including abortion, and including contraception for unmarried women, that are taken for granted today.
Look at the history of the suffragettes — jeered at, beaten and jailed and force-fed. Cartoons showing scold’s bridles (misogyny from earlier eras) on them so those uppity women can’t speak. Now women get told to shut up and that we’re dinosaurs hoarding our rights when we want women’s toilets instead of the equivalent of pissoirs, and and want women’s rape shelters to be for women.
#WomenWontWheesht “Wheesht” is the Scottish Gaelic term for “shut up.”
As much as I’m gobsmacked that the Trumpist judge thinks a former president should be allowed to steal and misfile classified documents, I’m even more gobsmacked that it’s, what now, more than a year and a half since Trump’s out of office before MaraLago was raided, and there are still documents missing. If it was you or I we’d be in prison already.
Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. What in the seven Tibetan hells is WRONG with these people!?!
Thanks for the pics of QE II through the years, BB. She lived her role in dignified, calm service. Here’s one of the last photos of her. That’s how I want to go — mobile and mentally sharp with only a couple of days before goodbye.
I’ve always had respect for the Queen’s devotion to duty, even though I wasn’t particularly interested in the royal stuff. And yet, now that she’s gone, I find I miss her a lot more than I thought I would. I’m downright sad about it.
Kate will be good once Charles moves on, but the Queen was the Queen for my entire life!
Yes, I’m surprised at the sadness I’m feeling. Charles won’t be an adequate replacement.