Lazy Caturday Reads: The Indictments

Happy Caturday!!

Greek Kitties, by Timothy Adam Matthews

Honestly, I don’t even know where to begin today. What is happening in U.S. politics right now is beyond anything we have ever experienced as a country, with the exception of the Civil War.

A former president of the U.S. tried to overthrow his own government in order to prevent a transition to a new president after he lost an election. He incited an attempted coup; and when that failed, he tried to overthrow the results of presidential votes in several states.

Finally, when all that failed to keep him in office, he stole hundreds of government documents and stored them in his private club in locations in which all kinds of people could have access to them. He displayed some of the documents to people without clearance to see them and, for all we know, could have given classified information to other countries.

It’s simply breathtaking.

Now the former president has been indicted for serious crimes, and his political party is still supporting him and vowing revenge on our most important institutions. Could it get any worse? The answer is yes, of course it could. He could end up winning his party’s 2024 nomination and being elected president again, even if he is in prison by that time.

So that’s where we stand right now. I’ll share some reads, but there is no way I have the time or space to include everything that’s out there.

First, here is a pdf of the indictment, if you’d like to read it. And here is an annotated version by Charlie Savage at the New York Times: The Trump Classified Documents Indictment, Annotated.

I think this description of the situation we are in by Tom Nichols at The Atlantic is very good. I could only read it in my email, because I’m not a subscriber. The title: Trump’s Indictment Reveals a National-Security Nightmare.

The charges—38 of them—are a big deal. And before the GOP gaslighting reaches supernova levels, let’s also bear in mind that what Trump actually did is a big deal too. He claimed that he declassified, by fiat, boxes of classified information, and then appears to have left all of that material sitting in ballrooms, bedrooms, and bathrooms. To this day, he insists that he had every right to do whatever he wanted with America’s secrets. Fortunately, the court has unsealed the indictment, because Americans need to know, and care, about the magnitude of Trump’s alleged offenses.

To understand the severity of the charges against Trump, consider a thought experiment: Imagine that Vladimir Putin is one day driven from the Kremlin, perhaps in a coup or in the face of a popular revolt. He jumps into his limousine and heads for self-imposed exile in a remote dacha. His trunk is full of secret documents that he decided belong to him, including details of the Russian nuclear deterrent and Russia’s military weaknesses.

Now imagine how valuable those boxes would be to any intelligence organization in the world. I spent the early years of my career analyzing Soviet and Russian documents as an academic Sovietologist, and I would have loved to see such materials. Small, seemingly trivial details—something as innocuous as a desk calendar or a notepad—might not mean much to a layperson, but to a professional, they could be pure gold. To get even a peek at such Russian materials would be an intelligence triumph.

By Timothy Adams Matthews

But of course, I would never have been able to lay my hands on them, because a cache of such immense importance, if U.S. operatives spirited any of it out of Russia, would have been secured in a vault somewhere deep in the CIA. Trump, meanwhile, left highly sensitive American documents lying around at a golf resort like practice balls on the driving range. According to the indictment:

“The Mar-a-Lago Club was an active social club, which, between January 2021 and August 2022, hosted events for tens of thousands of members and guests. After TRUMP’s presidency, The Mar-a-Lago Club was not an authorized location for the storage, possession, review, display, or discussion of classified documents. Nevertheless, TRUMP stored his boxes containing classified documents in various locations at The Mar-a-Lago Club—including in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room.”

Actually, it might be harder to steal practice balls. “The Storage Room,” the indictment notes, “was near the liquor supply closet, linen room, lock shop, and various other rooms.” These are not exactly low-traffic areas. Worse yet, the indictment asserts that Trump had some of these documents at his club in New Jersey, where he showed files to people who had no business seeing them. (One of them, according to the indictment, was something Trump claimed was a plan of attack on a foreign country prepared for him by the Department of Defense and a senior military official.)

If you can access The Atlantic website, you can read more, but I think that is a good summary of the seriousness of what this country is facing.

Here are a some long reads that address various aspects of the Trump indictment and it’s possible effects on U.S. politics and national security.

For more details on the national security situation, read this piece at Just Security: National Security Implications of Trump’s Indictment: A Damage Assessment.

At The Washington Post, Rachael Weiner writes about the specific charges: Here are the 37 charges against Trump and what they mean.

One of my least favorite New York Times writers, Peter Baker, evaluates what the indictment means for President Biden and the U.S. justice system: Trump’s Case Puts the Justice System on Trial, in a Test of Public Credibility. Why am I not surprised that this is what Baker chose to write about? Still, it’s worth considering.

More helpful reads, with excerpts:

John Gerstein at Politico: The startling, damning details in the Trump indictment.

Classified documents found in a shower. A clumsy effort to move boxes and hide them from the FBI. A damaging admission, caught on tape. And Donald Trump’s own public statements, used against him.

Those are some of the details in the indictment charging Trump and a longtime aide with an extraordinary scheme to hoard national secrets that Trump took to his Mar-a-Lago estate after leaving the White House.

Here are some of the most notable revelations.

By Timothy Adam Matthews

Showing off military plans

On at least two occasions after leaving office, Trump displayed classified documents to others visiting him at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, the indictment alleges. In July 2021, Trump showed a writer, a publisher and two staff members a “plan of attack” that he said had been prepared for him by the U.S. military, the charges say. The audio-recorded meeting reportedly involved a document that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley drafted about Iran.

Trump allegedly made a potentially damning admission at that session, saying he could have declassified the document while he was president but “now I can’t.”

A longtime aide turned co-conspirator

Trump isn’t the only person facing criminal charges over the classified documents fiasco: His longtime aide and “body man,” Walt Nauta, was also hit with six felony counts including obstruction of justice and making false statements to the FBI. The indictment says Trump instructed Nauta to move boxes containing classified documents in order to conceal them from both Trump’s own lawyers and the FBI.

Prosecutors accused Nauta of lying months ago and pressured him to cooperate in the investigation, a source familiar with the situation told POLITICO, but the charges unsealed Friday indicate that he and prosecutors didn’t come to terms on a deal – at least not yet.

Classified docs in a bathroom

The indictment says that Mar-a-Lago was a particularly vulnerable location for the classified documents because it’s “an active social club [that] hosted events for tens of thousands of members and guests” – a far cry from the closely guarded “sensitive compartmented information facility,” or SCIF, that is typically used to store the most sensitive national security secrets.

Trump has railed at the FBI for spreading classified documents across the floor of a closet during a search of Mar-a-Lago last August. But prosecutors say Trump’s own storage of the documents was just as sloppy. The indictment says some of the classified records at Mar-a-Lago were stored in “a ballroom, a bathroom and shower [and] his bedroom.”

Spilling secrets, literally

Other details from the indictment emphasize the haphazard nature with which sensitive government documents were strewn around the estate. The indictment alleges that, on at least one occasion in December 2021, boxes containing a mix of classified and unclassified records “spilled onto the floor” of a storage room. Helpfully for prosecutors, Nauta allegedly texted a photo of the scene to another Trump aide.

One of the documents, classified “Secret” and marked for release only to U.S. officials and close allies, discussed “military capabilities of a foreign country,” the indictment says.

More at the link

The Daily Beast: Photographic Proof: Feds Found Boxes of Classified Docs All Over Mar-a-Lago.

The 37-count indictment accusing Donald Trump of illegally hoarding classified documents used a wealth of surveillance footage, private conversations, employees’ text messages, audio-taped meetings, and witness statements to make a damning case.

But the 44-page document also included a half-dozen images of the documents themselves, stacked in boxes next to a toilet, spilling out onto the floor of a storage room, and piled up in rows on the stage of a ballroom at Trump’s resort in South Florida….

In one exchange outlined in the indictment and backed up with a photograph, Trump employees discussed moving some of Trump’s boxes of documents out of a Mar-a-Lago business center and into a bathroom instead so staff could use the business center as an office.

“Woah!! Ok so potus specifically asked Walt for those boxes to be in the business center because they are his ‘papers,’” one Trump employee texted to another, referencing Walt Nauta.

The two employees then went back and forth discussing what they could move to storage. “There is still a little room in the shower where his other stuff is,” one employee texted. “Is it only his papers he cares about? Theres some other stuff in there that are not papers. Could that go to storage? Or does he want everything in there on property.”

“Yes,” the second employee responds. “Anything that’s not the beautiful mind paper boxes can definitely go to storage.”

In another instance in May 2021, Trump told staff to move some of his boxes to a storage room, the indictment says. Images show the boxes stacked up in the storage room as well as a hallway leading to the room that prosecutors say could easily be reached from Mar-a-Lago’s pool patio. The storage room was right next to a liquor supply closet and a linen room.

In December 2021, Trump’s personal aide, Walt Nauta, found that some of those 80 boxes had fallen over and their contents spilled out on the floor.

Among the papers scattered around the storage room were, according to the indictment, a document marked “SECRET//REL TO USA//FVEY” which denoted information releasable only to the Five Eyes intelligence alliance of the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

You might want to read what Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel has to say about the indictment: The Mar-a-Lago Indictment is a Tactical Nuke.

I’ve become convinced that what I will call the Mar-a-Lago indictment — because I doubt this will be the only stolen documents one — is a tactical nuke: A massive tool, but simply a tactical one.

As I’ve laid out, it charges 31 counts of Espionage Act violations, each carrying a 10-year sentence and most sure to get enhancements for how sensitive the stolen documents are, as well as seven obstruction-related charges, four of which carry 20-year sentences. The obstruction-related charges would group at sentencing (meaning they’d really carry 20 year sentence total), but Espionage Act charges often don’t and could draw consecutive sentences: meaning Trump could be facing a max sentence of 330 years. Walt Nauta is really facing 20 years max — though probably around three or four years.

New York Kitty, by Timothy Adam Matthews

Obviously, Trump won’t serve a 330 year sentence, not least because Trump is mortal, already 76, and has eaten far too many burgers in his life.

For his part, Nauta should look on the bright side! He has not, yet, been charged with 18 USC 793(g), conspiring with Trump to hoard all those classified documents, though the overt acts in count 32, the conspiracy to obstruct count, would certainly fulfill the elements of offense of a conspiracy to hoard classified documents. If Nauta were to be charged under 793(g), he too would be facing a veritable life sentence, all for helping his boss steal the nation’s secrets. And for Nauta, who is in his 40s and healthy enough to lug dozens of boxes around Trump’s beach resort, that life sentence would last a lot longer than it would for Trump.

And that’s something to help understand how this is tactical.

I first started thinking that might be true when I saw Jack Smith’s statement.

He emphasized:

• A grand jury in Florida voted out the indictment
• The gravity of the crimes
• The talent and ethics of his prosecutors
• That Trump and Walt Nauta are presumed innocent
• He will seek a Speedy Trial
• A Florida jury will hear this case
• The dedication of FBI Agents

He packed a lot in fewer than three minutes, but the thing that surprised me was his promise for a Speedy Trial. He effectively said he wants to try this case, charging 31 counts of the Espionage Act, within 70 days.

That means the trial would start around August 20, and last — per one of the filings in the docket — 21 days, through mid-September. While all the other GOP candidates were on a debate stage, Trump would be in South Florida, watching as his closest aides described how he venally refused to give boxes and boxes of the nation’s secrets back.

There’s not a chance in hell that will happen, certainly not for Trump. Even if Trump already had at least three cleared attorneys with experience defending Espionage Act cases, that wouldn’t happen, because the CIPA process for this case, the fight over what classified evidence would be available and how it would be presented at trial, would last at least six months. And as of yesterday, he has just one lawyer on this case, Todd Blanche, who is also defending Trump in the New York State case.

There’s much more to read and think about at the link. Her main point seems to be that Smith wants to convince Walt Nauta to testify against Trump.

The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman: Who Is Walt Nauta, the Other Person Indicted Along With Trump?

More crazy at the link.

That’s just a sampling of what’s out there in the media today. What do you think? What stories have caught your attention?