New details are emerging that indicate that the Malignant Loser boxed up over 300 classified documents and took them to his Mar a Lago club when he left office, in violation of the law governing government records. It's a far larger number than had been previously assumed. From the New York Times report:
"In total, the government has recovered more than 300 documents with classified markings from Mr. Trump since he left office, the people said: that first batch of documents returned in January, another set provided by Mr. Trump’s aides to the Justice Department in June and the material seized by the F.B.I. in the search this month.
The previously unreported volume of the sensitive material found in the former president’s possession in January helps explain why the Justice Department moved so urgently to hunt down any further classified materials he might have.
And the extent to which such a large number of highly sensitive documents remained at Mar-a-Lago for months, even as the department sought the return of all material that should have been left in government custody when Mr. Trump left office, suggested to officials that the former president or his aides had been cavalier in handling it, not fully forthcoming with investigators, or both. (our emphasis)
The drip drip drip nature of Trump's release of the classified records suggests that he may have valued some documents more than others, and that the last batch retrieved by the FBI in its lawful search earlier this month was likely the set of records that Trump valued most and was fighting to retain. Once again, it begs the key questions of why he wanted the classified records at his Florida estate and what was he going to use them for. Extortion? Use against political enemies, foreign and domestic? Highest bidder? We're hoping that the ongoing investigation sheds light on those questions. The report continues:
"The specific nature of the sensitive material that Mr. Trump took from the White House remains unclear. But the 15 boxes Mr. Trump turned over to the archives in January, nearly a year after he left office, included documents from the C.I.A., the National Security Agency and the F.B.I. spanning a variety of topics of national security interest, a person briefed on the matter said.
Mr. Trump went through the boxes himself in late 2021, according to multiple people briefed on his efforts, before turning them over." (our emphasis)
That last bit of information would appear to puncture the notion that he wasn't directly involved in selecting what he took, for reasons that remain undisclosed for now.
