Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

There are clear laws that protect federal records – with varying degrees of likelihood in their application.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/11/politics/trump-legal-risk-explainer/index.html

The only reason they would have to open the safe would be if someone told them what was likely in the safe, no?

I like the detail that it wasn't, like, some vault, it was just some shitty standard hotel safe.

I am curious why this Asshole who had no attachment to the office or job or White House or really much at all would take 15 boxes of *anything* with him, let alone 15 boxes of documents. He seems like the type of Asshole that would just leave all his shit behind. Also, 15 boxes is a lot. There is no way this dickhead knows what is in those boxes, right? He probably just told some underling to dump everything from the Oval Office into some boxes and ship it down to Florida, like someone who stays in hotels and compulsively takes home all the free pens, paper, soaps, shampoos, anything that's not nailed down.

he's probably selling information to other countries

That's what I was thinking it was about, not stealing incriminating documents to protect himself, we already know he flushes those down the toilet, but stealing top secret documents to sell or blackmail, that sounds like something he wouldn't be able to resist on his way out of the white house.

We’ve gotten so used to the cartoon villainy of Trump and his people—but it is refreshing to see the FBI treating him with no deference.

One of Asshole's supporters tweeted some ridiculous defense about Asshole declassifying a bunch of shit and taking it with him because the American people deserve to know all these secrets, or some such shit. Which would imply intent to distribute or make public, if it weren't such obvious bullshit.

/22 This is a good suggestion by Andrew Weissmann. There’s reporting that a DoJ team recently visited Mar-a-Lago and talked to people including Trump himself about the documents. If he lied, that would be a classic FBI trap. Still seems light to justify that search. https://t.co/ppVVvIr5RD

— DarkTimesHat (@Popehat) August 9, 2022

Thomas Schwartz, a professor at Vanderbilt University who studies and writes about the presidency, said Nixon wasn’t allowed to take tapes or other materials from the White House when he resigned in 1974.

Many of Nixon's papers remained in Washington for years before being transferred to his presidential library in California, Schwartz said.

“This is different and it is a sign of how unique the Trump period was... how his behaviour was so unusual," Schwartz told the Associated Press news agency.

So Nixon wasn't 'allowed,' and Trump was allowed to remove stuff.. who is on site to make this call? Is there was non-partisan White House overseer?

I mean, pretty clearly he *wasn't* allowed. Now able, that's a different question, but this Asshole has been able to do all sorts of shit his whole life.

the thing is, despite the resignation and everything else, the establishment would have lost it's mind if the FBI raided Nixon's home looking for evidence. I gather that the pardon was meant to stop that kind of thing from happening. Trump doesn't get that kind of institutional protection.

I think the key to this situation is that they were not looking for evidence, the evidence is what earned them the warrant.

One of the funniest things about the state of AI images right now is that when you feed it a name, it's just like, "Hell, yeah, got it, here's that person doing everything you wanted."

Someone else asked it for an image of Trump getting perp-walked, and it returned this, lol pic.twitter.com/ikGBcW9Syt

— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) August 9, 2022

16 year old me: Hey, 37 year old me, what is the future like?

Me: Well, I learned about the former president getting raided by the FBI from an internet cat talking to a rapper.

16 year old me: wait what pic.twitter.com/U0gGaraHRl

— Ben Mooney, Lasagna Councilman (@Ben_Etcetera) August 9, 2022

that AI-generate image is gonna haunt my nightmares for weeks to come

do they stop and think for a single fucking second or is this another one of those things they say constantly but don't actually believe???

No.

sir, this is a Wendy's pic.twitter.com/ptcXKEGcgI

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 10, 2022

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump says he invoked Fifth Amendment, declined to answer questions during testimony in NY civil investigation.

— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) August 10, 2022

Honestly, if I were this asshole's lawyer I would just tell him to plead the 5th to anything, always, because he's a walking perjury trap, even discounting his usual run of the mill everyday perjury.

OK, knowing this guy's tweet history, there MUST be a time when he said "anyone pleading the 5th MUST be guilty!"

Not that it matters a bit, but these clips will be on endless loop for the next couple of days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMyh7ko9L2g

If I’m not mistaken, despite years of speculation and expectation, this is the first time Trump is actually invoking the Fifth to avoid answering questions.

It is absolutely the right call in his circumstances.

— InvokeTheHat (@Popehat) August 10, 2022

Snopes: Did Trump Say ‘If You’re Innocent, Why Are You Taking the 5th Amendment?’

In fact, Trump has used the Fifth Amendment himself. Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right during a divorce deposition in 1990 to avoid answering nearly a hundred questions.

yeah, looking at the thread I posted that is perhaps the only example people have of him using the fifth.

Trump took Fifth Amendment more than 440 times in refusing to answer New York attorney general’s questions https://t.co/t4kJ3UXyku

— CNBC (@CNBC) August 11, 2022

In an episode of a low-budget Twilight Zone rip-off, Asshole would be stuck in a room pleading the fifth for eternity.

"What do you mean, Mr. Trump? This *is* your life!"

At approximately 9 AM this morning an armed subject attempted to breach the Visitor Screening Facility at #FBI Cincinnati. After an alarm and a response by FBI special agents, the subject fled north onto Interstate 71. pic.twitter.com/vFZHnpbM9L

— FBI Cincinnati (@FBICincinnati) August 11, 2022

of course, cincinnati is where the fbi keeps the extra top secret stuff

gee who could have imagined framing this as some banana republic shit would rile up the dumbshit Bocepherati

well, the Cincinatti FBI office it clearly run by Democrats:

The office's public corruption team has been probing an alleged $60 million bribery scheme in which FirstEnergy Corp. reputedly paid former Republican Speaker Larry Householder to orchestrate the passage of a $1 billion bailout of two nuclear plants owned by its then-subsidiary and to squelch a repeal effort.

bringing a firearm into an FBI office before you have a chance to produce offspring might not be such a bad thing

not surprising...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/11/us/politics/trump-fbi-subpoena.html

I for one am shocked that the former President of the United States would blow off a subpoena.

Trump receives more restraint than the average poor civilian would when committing a crime, whine as if he's the victim of a no-knock warrant and had a flash bang grenade thrown in his face anyway

Some senior Republicans have been warned by allies of Mr. Trump not to continue to be aggressive in criticizing the Justice Department and the F.B.I. over the matter because it is possible that more damaging information about Mr. Trump related to the search will eventually become public.

If this is true, will be interesting to see if it has an effect.

Once you hang your hat on "planted evidence" does it really matter what else comes out?

I am convinced that the DOJ/FBI would not have done this if the contents of the documents were not potentially very incriminating. The mere possession of them would be unlikely to justify such a public spectacle.

For that matter, I don't know why they would have been at Mar-A-Lago (how I have come to loathe that name) had they not been incriminating in the first place.

I was just holding it for a friend.

If this stuff were truly incriminating I'm wondering why it wasn't given a viking funeral like a long time ago?

That is a great question. On the other hand, I found myself wondering through all four years of the Kakistocracy why people were doing the things they were doing.

xp most likely because they just now found out about it somehow? I am still guessing this had to be something from Alex Jones's phone

I'm sticking with my theory that Asshole took something as a souvenir that wouldn't pass the national security smell test. Could be something as seemingly innocuous (to Asshole) as a thank you note for dropping a bomb on an enemy or something, that seems like something Asshole would a) actually have read and b) taken with him and c) boastfully shared with others.

Would that constitute a "raid"

This is Trump's Rosebud, his Maltese Falcon ...

I don’t think Alex Jones’ phone will turn out to have anything to do with this. Mark Banston has given an interview to Young Turks and says anybody expecting revelations will be disappointed as Jones appears to be rather isolated and nobody returns his messages. The most salacious thing was he had been sending nudes of his wife to Roger Stone, and Banks suggested these may have been taken without her knowledge.

Also dick pics.

Interview is on YouTube

Like I said some other time, it beggars belief that one of the most intellectually incurious people of all time would actually have 15 or 20 boxes of currently or formerly classified shit he wanted to take down with him, because that would presume he read it, and there is no way he did. So my guess is (best case scenario for him) it was just stuff of surface curiosity he took with him, and perhaps unknowingly some of that stuff was super-duper classified. And then at some point someone else got a gander ("Hey, check out this cool night-image picture of this Iranian nuclear weapons site we took before we blew the shit out of that place!") and ratted him out. Though I wish and hope it's something worse.

Mark Banston has given an interview to Young Turks and says anybody expecting revelations will be disappointed as Jones appears to be rather isolated and nobody returns his messages.

it's daily beast but

https://www.thedailybeast.com/tucker-carlson-shitting-himself-scared-that-his-alex-jones-texts-may-leak

we all know whats in those boxes... its da pee tape baby

in all seriousness he prob took whatever it was for a reason, but also it couldve been for no reason

unfortunate mixup with the pop secret homestyle butter 30 pack, unfortunately left behind and likely expired by now

“It’s important that I, and the DOJ, address what’s on every American’s minds at this unique moment in our history: Beyoncé’s ‘Renaissance’.”

Asshole may have taken stuff he thought he could sell for big bux.