Not long ago, Donald Trump and his shrinking coterie of liars seized on the delusional belief that he would greatly benefit, at least in the public relations realm, if the Justice Department released the document explaining the FBI’s reasons for its Mar-a-Lago search warrant. The MAGA mantra, for a brief tawdry moment, was “Release the Affidavit!”
Well, it was unsealed today (albeit with redactions), and it makes the FPOTUS (as Trump is called) look more worse than ever. No doubt you’re shocked.
A sworn FBI affidavit is tasked with persuading a federal judge that there’s probable cause of criminality. This one did the job: “There is probable cause to believe that the locations to be searched at the premises contain evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegal possessed, in violation” of three federal criminal code statutes – most notably the law against espionage. Also, there was “probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found.”
The affidavit explains that the government sought in vain, for the entirety of 2021, to recover suspected sensitive materials that did not belong to Trump. Finally, earlier this year, the Trump team coughed up 15 boxes; the FBI found 184 “unique documents bearing classified markings,” including 25 tagged as top secret. According to the affidavit, written by an FBI agent specializing in counterintelligence, the most sensitive documents contained information about our national defense. The kind of stuff that’s protected by the Espionage Act. The kind of stuff that’s supposed to be secured in Washington, not stashed at some resort where unauthorized people traipse in and out.
It was also quite creepy – the most charitable adjective I can conjure – to learn in the affidavit that some of the retrieved classified material was provided to the U.S. by our “clandestine human sources.” In other words, Trump was illegally hoarding documents that, if shared with foreign nations, could expose and endanger undercover people who’ve been working for us.
That’s not cool. And speaking of exposure:
Trump would love to unmask the people who’ve been ratting him out in Mar-a-Lago; indeed, the affidavit cites the “significant number of civilian witnesses” who’ve helped the feds build their case. But those witnesses are rightly blacked out in the redactions, to protect their “safety and privacy.” In other words, the Justice Department, as well as the judge who OKd the redacted release, don’t want the civilians or participating FBI agents to suffer the usual MAGA abuse and death threats.
The affidavit, in a footnote, also destroys one of the Trump team’s fictional defenses – the notion that the defeated president can magically declassify whatever he wants after leaving office and that such powers entitle him to keep whatever he wants. The affidavit explains that, under the Espionage Act, it doesn’t matter a whit whether such materials are classified or not. That law criminalizes the theft of what it broadly calls “information respecting the national defense.” In fact, the law was passed before the classification system was even created.
In case you care, Trump is denouncing the redacted affidavit as “a total public relations subterfuge.” He should be soiling his undies, because this lifelong grifter is nearing his day of reckoning.