Trump Charged With 37 counts of Espionage, Obstruction and related crimes

[N.E. Brigand]

CNN: "Special counsel probing Trump Organization’s handling of Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage."

The handling of the footage, and how employees within the Trump Organization responded to the Justice Department’s demand for it, have prompted a new round of grand jury subpoenas to top Trump employees in the last few weeks, the sources told CNN.

Longtime Trump Organization executives Matthew Calamari Sr. and his son Matthew Calamari Jr. are expected to appear Thursday before the grand jury investigating possible mishandling of classified documents brought to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, sources said. Prosecutors are expected to ask them about the handling of the surveillance footage and Trump employees’ conversations following the subpoena, according to the sources.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Interesting!

[N.E. Brigand]

Two related duos who won't be testifying tomorrow:





"The files in your head / You take them to bed / You're never ever through."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

As for the news that the special counsel is now investigating possible tampering of the surveillance tapes, my only concern about that is that it is just going to extend out the investigation longer. As some point they are going to have to either shit or get off the pot, preferably before Donald Trump is president again.

[N.E. Brigand]

The New York Times reports that Special Counsel Jack Smith's investigation into Donald Trump's documents has "obtained the confidential cooperation of a person who has worked for him at Mar-a-Lago, part of an intensifying effort to determine whether Mr. Trump ordered boxes containing sensitive material moved out of a storage room there as the government sought to recover it last year, multiple people familiar with the inquiry said."

Here's a curious description: "In the past few weeks, at least four more Mar-a-Lago employees have been subpoenaed, along with another person who had visibility into Mr. Trump’s thinking when he first returned material to the National Archives, according to people briefed on the matter." Visibility into his thinking?

Did we previously know that "hoping to understand why some of the footage from the storage camera appears to be missing or unavailable — and whether that was a technological issue or something else — the prosecutors subpoenaed the software company that handles all of the surveillance footage for the Trump Organization, including at Mar-a-Lago"?

At some point, investigators even apparently conducted interviews about Trump's "habit of flushing material down toilets."

Finally, Allison Gill thinks this is signifcant: "One of the previously unreported subpoenas to the Trump Organization sought records pertaining to Mr. Trump’s dealings with a Saudi-backed professional golf venture known as LIV Golf, which is holding tournaments at some of Mr. Trump’s golf resorts. It is unclear what bearing Mr. Trump’s relationship with LIV Golf has on the broader investigation, but it suggests that the prosecutors are examining certain elements of Mr. Trump’s family business."

There's actually quite a bit more to chew on in that article.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I doubt that will turn out to be that significant, but who knows? I think that her observation about the cooperating witness is more significant.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Two questions that I have:

1) Is the cooperating witness the same person who gave information that enabled the DoJ to obtain probable cause to search Mar-a-Lago in the first place, or someone else (we don't know for sure that there was a cooperating witness that game them information that led to the search, but I think is if very likely).

2) If it is true that Trump hid documents, why did he try to hard to keep them? Is it just a question of him feeling enabled to have them, or is there something in particular that is very damaging to him that he is trying to keep secret?

[N.E. Brigand]

2) If it is true that Trump hid documents, why did he try to hard to keep them? Is it just a question of him feeling enabled to have them, or is there something in particular that is very damaging to him that he is trying to keep secret?

Damaging to him or potentially beneficial to him, i.e., something he could sell or use to bribe or blackmail somebody else.

[RoseMorninStar]

2) If it is true that Trump hid documents, why did he try to hard to keep them? Is it just a question of him feeling enabled to have them, or is there something in particular that is very damaging to him that he is trying to keep secret?

Yes, yes, and yes. He's a narcissist. They don't think like anyone else. They are their own scriptwriters and everyone else is just a prop.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

2) If it is true that Trump hid documents, why did he try to hard to keep them? Is it just a question of him feeling enabled to have them, or is there something in particular that is very damaging to him that he is trying to keep secret?

Damaging to him or potentially beneficial to him, i.e., something he could sell or use to bribe or blackmail somebody else.

True.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I think Allison Gill's speculation here is premature, but she may well be right.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This strikes me as closer to the truth.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

All in all it's just another brick in the wall

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Marcy sees this a evidence that Jack Smith is looking at Espionage Act charges (which of course it is).

[N.E. Brigand]

Today the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released the transcript of a March 1 hearing with members of the National Archives on the subject of classified documents that are retained by former public officials. It turns out over the past 15 years, the Archives have been called about 80 times by various libraries where former Members of Congress have deposited their papers, because those papers turned out to include classified documents. We never hear about this because it's so routine, and also because the former Representatives and Senators never try to retain control over those classified documents once identified as such (much less defy subpoenas).

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Which puts the Biden and Pence situations in context, and shows how different the Trump situation is from normal.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[N.E. Brigand]

When I saw earlier today that Tim Parlatore, the lawyer who recently left Donald Trump's team, was on CNN complaining publicly that Trump aide Boris Epshteyn was preventing Trump's legal team from actually talking to their client, I had two immediate thoughts: (1) Is Parlatore violating his ethical responsibilities by making this appearance, and (2) Is he secretly still working for Trump? This looks like a move to protect the former president and insurrectionist, at least by delaying the process by giving Trump an opportunity to say that he personally didn't know that his team wasn't being responsive to Jack Smith's investigation.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I thought both of those things myself.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

You could say this was significant, but if you did, you would be making a vast understatement. I was wondering when we would start hearing about what was in Corcoran's notes.