Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

Press conference tomorrow to say he found Nicole Brown Simpsons real killer

In pursuing the unprecedented search of Donald Trump's residence on Monday, the FBI was seeking to retrieve Top Secret and "compartmented" documents dealing with intelligence "sources and methods," two federal government sources tell Newsweek—documents with the potential to reveal U.S. intelligence sources, including human sources on the American government payroll.

This greatly complicates any public discussion of the documents or any substantiation of Trump's potential violation of U.S. law. The sources, who were briefed on the investigation, requested anonymity in order to discuss sensitive information.
Compartmented" is a specific term meaning "classified information concerning or derived from intelligence sources, methods, or analytical processes, which is required to be handled within formal access control systems established by the Director of National Intelligence." It includes a variety of different access categories—for example, human, intercept, satellite sources—each of which limits how many people can know the nature of the compartment. One of the government sources says that "special access program" information was involved in the Mar-a-Lago case, a further category of information limited to an even smaller group of people.
In order to prove that this was a matter of national security and essential to be done in this way, some detail on what Trump was keeping will have to be revealed," one intelligence officer, granted anonymity to speak about an ongoing investigation, tells Newsweek. "That might be difficult for the government precisely because of the sensitivity of the documents."
...The former president does not have authority to declassify such documents, intelligence sources say, because they are classified under statute rather than by executive order. Trump's possession of those documents and the fact that he was secreting them away came to light in the course of a multi-month federal government investigation that focused on the status of presidential records taken from the White House.

again:

...The former president does not have authority to declassify such documents, intelligence sources say, because they are classified under statute rather than by executive order.

So as long as they're in that category, they don't have to be (totally?) unredacted for a judge to rule: the statute has been violated or whatever you call it, so he's guilty, prob fined, and hopefully disqualified from running for President again.

I mean, the minute I read in 2016 that she was a Christian, anti-marriage equality individual from Hawai’i , it was pretty evident that she was actually a conservative— all of those types are

― broccoli rabe thomas (the table is the table), Saturday, August 13, 2022 2:05 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

shes part of some weird hindu cult, theres a good article about it that goes deep into the whole situation

i'm in that cult, that's where i met her. she used to be cool

damn ok right on

this is the article I think: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/06/what-does-tulsi-gabbard-believe
by Kelefa Sanneh

Big Liars have a name for fans of the former president who don't want to overturn democracy: “TINOs” — Trump in Name Only. https://t.co/h9jMJJu1LT

— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) August 14, 2022

https://vz.cnwimg.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/GettyImages-72339295-e1592246469554.jpg

Karl what is the deal with Science of Identity -- I was ISKCON for years, I note that SoI's guru claims direct disciplic succession from Srila Prabhupada & his bio notes this too, but no talk of when a split from ISKCON happened or what sastra's being invoked to justify a new lineage outside of Prabhupada's own org. Not that there aren't good reasons to split from ISKCON, mind!

i'm in that cult, that's where i met her. she used to be cool

this was not true! i thought it was funny to just immediately claim membership in whatever group Tulsi Gabbard is, but I can see how that is neither funny nor interesting. so, no insight on the ISKCON/Science of Identity stuff! (the joy of ilx is i expect someone else probably does though)

also that is a really cursed tino pic mookie lol

(i thought the joke was silly and funny tbh please don't hate me).

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FaNKAqlXgAE7wcW?format=png&name=small

So many questions:

is the former president a flight risk? pic.twitter.com/yr8tgKpBjl

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 15, 2022

Why does he have two passports? Which country issued the second one? Why was he keeping his multiple passports in the same boxes as the classified shit he had his lawyers falsely swear he didn't have?

US military folks have two passports, one for military use and one for personal use. Wouldn't be surprised if a lot of politicians have similar.

wait, when did they let this fucker back on Twitter?

they didn't, Truth Social is a Twitter rip off. Note red check instead of blue.

They "stole" his passports :rollseyes:

thank u (xp)

This feels to me like Trump didn't want to return a bunch of boxes of crap out of spite, and played chicken with their return until some bureaucrat got sick of it and called the cops on him to get them back. That seems more likely to me than Trump planning to sell a burn list to the Saudis or something, but I could be wrong.

Agreed that selling info seems like a bridge too far for even him. Seems more likely that he wanted to impress his douchey club friends with fancy documents that he would otherwise never read or understand.

Yeah, but as I understand it a lot of this stuff should never have been there in the first place--the fact that it was taken from its proper location (e.g., the SCIF) is problematic in and of itself and begs the question why and how it ended up in Florida.

no need to sell anything directly when you can just have money funneled to jared

ultimately I'm getting the sense it doesn't really matter what he *planned* to do with it, just having it there is a huge fucking deal

that said I don't see why anyone would give him the benefit of the doubt on this, if there's one consistent thing in politics these days it's that if you give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt on literally anything you'll wind up looking like a fool. often the very next day

Oh, I'm sure he's learned his lesson this time.

i am so sick of thinking about this fucker

OTFM. If he died tomorrow I'd be glad never to give him another thought, unless it was maybe to piss on his grave if I were in the area.

ultimately I'm getting the sense it doesn't really matter what he *planned* to do with it, just having it there is a huge fucking deal

This is exactly right. The example I saw on Twitter was a federal employee who took documents home to keep working on them after hours. The FBI came down the chimney and off to prison he went.

Is it a huge deal, though? Not to both-sides it, but did other presidents have boxes of classified stuff at their residences? I'm guessing they probably did. I'm sure that if they did, since they aren't fucking babies like Trump, they would have returned the boxes, when asked.

I actually really doubt any of them did, and if they did it's nothing even close to the magnitude of what Trump reportedly had

Is it a huge deal, though? Not to both-sides it, but did other presidents have boxes of classified stuff at their residences? I'm guessing they probably did.

Yes, it's a huge deal. No, other presidents did not do this.

August 2016 pic.twitter.com/6Fg3sq00CW

— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) August 15, 2022

Ex-presidents do normally continue to get security briefings. Biden suspended Trump's because the latter is such a security risk. I doubt you'd find another ex-president who had the kind of stuff that Trump apparently had, though. As I understand it, the "SCI" stuff in particular normally does not leave its secure location.

the person who keeps coming to mind is General Petraeus, someone who really was just fucking around with classified info, but in the end that didn't matter. maybe its true that Trump wasn't planning to do anything with it, much like it could be true that "very fine people on both sides" was actually just referring to those who showed up early to express their enthusiasm for Civil War statues. or that "grab 'em by the pussy" was just something he pulled out of thin air to impress Billy Bush. but it's also true that Trump & his organization has a lot of well-documented shady dealings with hostile nations and that he has zero respect whatsoever for the law or the interests of America itself so

He has something like $800 million in loans coming due, and an inability to separate the public interest from his own.

No, other presidents did not do this.

Source?

I'm not asking about KEEPING stuff, just about taking it to their homes while they were president.

another thing is that Trump had basically no interest in this stuff while he was actually President, in fact the people briefing him literally had to dumb it down to a 5th grade level in order to get him to even pay attention. but now Kushner gets this insane, nonsensical $2 billion deal from the Saudis and suddenly he's stealing boxes of it? idk man pretty sus

c'mon, this FBI raid business is so last week

Full story from Washington Post:https://t.co/GmkJaQ5RPM

— Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) August 15, 2022

It seems likely to me that within days of being sworn in that Trump went through as much classified information as he could (or directed that his trusted lackeys do so) in order to monetize as much of it as possible. It defies belief, in fact, that he wouldn't do exactly that. He took all the valuable stuff to Mar-a-Lago because he quite reasonably inferred that he would never face any consequences for doing so, since he's never gotten in real trouble for anything in his entire life. And here we are.

Prolly not, but I hope there's a way that they can determine if those documents have been scanned or photographed while they were in his possession.

Well, they were secured by a padlock. Eventually.

dont forget the Trump DC hotel which was about to go under until he won, at which point he used it to conduct official government business at insane markups

Trump models himself on a mafia don. Whatever he had in mind by keeping those documents, you can be sure he thought he could use them to increase his power or to make money.

Knowledge *is* power. He was already very smart and knew almost everything, which made him very powerful, but now these boxes of classified shit have taught him so much more, making him even more powerful! No one will be laughing when he completes his secret nuclear missile silo base below Mar a Lago. And when he starts wearing an eye patch we will know he has reached his final Emilio Largo form.

for DJI

Can a president legally remove declassified information from the White House?
No, according to security experts. There are other laws that protect the country’s most sensitive secrets beyond how it is classified. For example, according to Aftergood, some of the intelligence and documents related to nuclear weapons can’t be declassified by the president. Aftergood said such information is protected by a different law, the Atomic Energy Act.

Another law — called “gathering, transmitting or losing defense information” — states it is illegal to remove documents related to national security from their proper place if it could risk the security of the country, no matter the classification level of the information.

“The classification is just one piece of the picture,” Aftergood said. There are other protections in the law that can make disclosure or unauthorized retention problematic or even criminal.

Removing certain property and documents from the White House would also violate the Presidential Records Act, which requires presidents to preserve official records during their time in office. The act says that records from a presidency are public property and do not belong to the president or the White House team. Violating the records act would be a civil, not a criminal, offense.

Who can access classified information?
Government workers and contractors must go through background checks to receive the necessary clearance to access classified information. The more sensitive the information, the more arduous the background check process a person would need to pass to get clearance. There is certain classified information that thousands of people can access. For other information, only a handful of people have the necessary clearance levels to access it. The president would have access to every document and all intelligence information.

Some workers have to sign nondisclosure agreements when they leave the government to ensure they do not discuss the secret information they had access to while on the job, said Javed Ali, a senior official at the National Security Council during the Trump administration who now teaches at the University of Michigan.

“You go through serious levels of background checks to get a clearance, and not everyone passes,” Ali said. “You want people who can be trusted with this sensitive information and do the right thing.”

from this

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/13/trump-warrant-classified-answers/