Every Indictment Tells A Story, Don't It?
Each new chapter of the Trump saga is more lurid than the last, but the Miami grand jury's charging document pulls back the curtain on the most bizarre post-Presidency in American history
I am supposed to be working on my book today, but I felt that I owed you, my readers, a column on this momentous day. No short takes today, because the post is already too long. Enjoy, and feel free to:
Last night joy rang out throughout what remains of our democracy. At the same time, the Republican Party was consumed by howls of obligatory and impotent rage. Timed for the evening news shows, the news that a federal grand jury impaneled by Special Counsel Jack Smith handed down an indictment of former president Donald Trump.
Much has happened since then. Among these developments: Trump’s personal aide, Waltine “Walt” Nauta, it turns out, has also been indicted, and the two attorneys that headed up the Former Guy’s defense team, Jim Trusty and John Rowley, have resigned.
The Nauta indictment makes sense on several levels: Trump is ferociously lazy. He wasn’t schlepping boxes around on his own, nor, I suspect, did he want to know how and where they were being schlepped. Trump has always had people to interpret and carry out his wishes: Michael Cohen was one of them. But the other reason the Nauta indictment makes sense is that if, as alleged, he touched, lied about, or ordered a schlepping of those documents, he and Trump are conspirators. Nauta is charged with repeatedly lying about the whereabouts of these items.
But the other reason the Nauta indictment makes sense is that there’s nothing like the threat of federal prison and being bankrupted by a criminal defense team to persuade someone to switch teams.
The resignations are more opaque, but it seems likely that Trump lies to his attorneys. In his public appearances and the books published under his name, he has shown no capacity for telling the truth, even when there is no upside to lying. And he seems to lie more brazenly and transparently when under stress (see: CNN Town Hall.) Again, we can’t know, but I am guessing that when Trusty and Rowley saw the indictment, they realized not just that Jack Smith had information they did not have but that they could not possibly defend someone who was sandbagging and gaslighting them.
Remember, in May, Trump also lost Tim Parlatore, who blamed “infighting” in Trump’s inner circle, naming Boris Epshteyn in particular. Parlatore charged that Epshteyn “had really done everything he could to try to block us, to prevent us from doing what we could to defend the president.”
These three seasoned attorneys will be replaced by Todd Blanche, also on the team fighting the indictment brought by New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and “a firm to be named later.” LOL. Is it even possible to run out of lawyers?
Two fundamental lessons arise from this situation, ones that even small children know: never lie to a government agent, and never lie to your lawyer. The first is a felony, and the second is just stupid.
But the best thing is that we don’t have to wait until the arraignment next Tuesday to see the indictment! Jack Smith unsealed it today—and baby, it is Christmas in June, particularly since, if Trump actually read the thing, he had to sit with these words: “At 12:00 p.m. on January 20, 2021, TRUMP ceased to be president.” But there’s more.
First, here is what we are talking about a man who is a variety of hoarders and who gradually put together boxes of material that represented a weird personal archive of souvenirs. “Over the course of his presidency, TRUMP gathered newspapers, press clippings,” the indictment reads; “letters, notes, cards, photographs, official documents,
and other materials in cardboard boxes that he kept in the White House. Among the materials TRUMP stored in his boxes were hundreds of classified documents.
The classified documents TRUMP stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a*foreign attack. The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued nviability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.
If it weren’t so terrifying, it would be funny. Next, we follow those boxes, full of classified documents, to Mar-A-Lago, “an active social club, which, between January 2021 and August 2022, hosted events for tens of thousands of members and guests.” MAGA-Largo, we learn, “was not an authorized location for the storage, possession,review, display, or discussion of classified documents.” There, they were stored “in various locations…including in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room.”
A ballroom? A shower?
Indeed, the boxes were stacked on the stage in the White and Gold Ballroom for the first three months, where numerous events took place. The DOJ has helpfully provided a photograph that gives you a sense of that.
Individual documents also migrated to meetings with various people who had no security clearance, much less any need to see them. Trump would read from them or narrate their contents while warning his audience that they were “a secret” and not to “get too close.”
What follows is the saga of the federal government trying to repossess these documents and being obstructed and lied to all the way, in part by Nauta, but also by attorneys who—to give them minimal credit—were probably being lied to. But during this period, thousands of people who wandered into the wrong shower or were vacuuming the ballroom had potential access to national secrets, including human intelligence (HUMINT.). “As of January 2021,” the indictment reads,
The Mar-a-Lago Club had hundreds of members and was staffed by more than 150 full-time, part-time, and temporary employees. Between January 2021 and August 2022, The Mar-a-Lago Club hosted more than 150 social events, including weddings, movie premieres, and fundraisers that together drew tens of thousands of guests.
Meanwhile, while not responsible for classified documents, the Secret Service detail assigned to the Trump household was also kept from being told they were on the premises. Lesson three: Never lie to the Secret Service.
We then learn, amid a lengthy explanation of the classification system, that after he left the presidency, Trump was entitled to exactly none of what he took with him: nevertheless, he had classified documents from at least seven different agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and the Department of Defense.
In March, the papers had to leave the ballroom and go to the business center. Still, a month later, staff members wanted to use the business center for business. And here, we have a sense that Trump had more or less lost interest in them since people who worked for him, known as "1" and "2", were left in charge of finding somewhere else to put them. This is how they ended up in the shower. When 1 texted 2 to ask where he wanted them, 2 replied, "Woah!! Ok so potus specifically asked Walt for those boxes to be in the business center because they are his 'papers.'“
Then, they had this exchange:
Trump Employee 2: We can definitely make it work if we move his papers into the lake room?
Trump Employee 1: There is still a little room in the shower where his other stuff is. 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
Trump Employee 2: Yes—anything that's not the beautiful mind paper boxes can definitely go to storage. Want to take a look at the space and start moving tomorrow AM?
Eighty boxes of papers were transferred to the shower. In May, Trump had them moved to a storage room "including one accessible from The Mar-a-Lago Club pool patio through a doorway that was often kept open. The Storage Room was near the liquor supply closet, linen room, lock shop, and various other rooms." In December, an employee went into the room and found several boxes had fallen and documents were strewn around, including one that was eyes-only for the heads of five allied intelligence services.
Trump also had a few boxes transferred to Bedminster that month when he headed north for the summer. And this is where sitting with a writer who was recording the conversation, the Former Guy produced a classified document and chatted about its contents, repeatedly referring to it as "secret" and confirming that he knew it was not declassified. He did the same thing with the head of one of his PACs, although the conversation was not recorded.
But it's also clear, from text messages in the document, that as the National Archives attempted to reclaim the records, Trump was spending hours sifting through them. But he didn't want to part with them. As one of his attorneys wrote in his notes, Trump complained, "I don't want anybody looking, I don't want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don't, I don't want you looking through my boxes." He then asked, at various points,
“Well what if we, what happens if we just don't respond at all or don't play ball with them?”
“Wouldn't it be better if we just told them we don't have anything here?”
“Well look, isn't it better if there are no documents?”
The final suggestion was accompanied by a broad hint that if someone else destroyed the documents, Trump would not be prosecuted.
And this is how we, and a former President of the United States, ended up where we are today. The indictment lists 31 counts of “Willful Retention of National Defense Information,” two counts of conspiracy, four counts of concealing documents or deceiving federal investigators about them, and two counts of false statements.
This one is a show stopper, friends. Trump’s foolish presidential comeback attempt is now officially over.
Isn't that odd? I bet that is going to be the 2023 Halloween costume of the year.
This is a compelling, well written piece. It should be posted widely.