Friday morning, I wanted to try to say why the charges against Donald Trump are serious. Why it’s not exactly a case of a late book at the library.
Then, the United States Department of Justice published the charges, 44 pages detailing the offenses alleged against the former president.
And then I changed my mind.
Not that the detail of the facts advanced is less serious than I thought. On the contrary, it is very serious and amply justifies criminal charges.
But all that is at the same time an immense burlesque comedy.
In 100 years, or maybe just next year, when we look at the collapse of the American empire, we’ll have the image of these boxes of “top secret” documents on nuclear secrets piled haphazardly in damp cardboard boxes in the back of a bathroom.
PHOTO DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE OF THE UNITED STATES, PROVIDED BY AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Other boxes of documents stacked in a bathroom at the Mar-a-Lago residence
Experts have been debating for months on the deep motivations of Donald Trump. Why did he take out all those boxes of documents? Why did he refuse to return them? Why did he hide some when he returned others? Why lie to the police? To his lawyers?
One could imagine a dark plot to sell sensitive information to a foreign power. Let’s take a random country… Well, maybe the R*****? Maybe he wanted to blackmail the US government, which was threatening to have him accused one day? Have a currency of exchange? Because there will be other charges!
Well no.
Trump just wanted to “have this”. Own them. Talk about. Show them a bit. Brag about it. Disgust the federal government.
In any case, nothing in the revealed evidence shows any coherent plan. Boxes were on the stage of one of the two ballrooms. Others in his bedroom. Still others behind a toilet bowl. Some were in the garage. All this in a kind of mess.
Employees are seen moving them from place to place. Talk about it among themselves. We see a box ripped open and papers classified as “secret” fallen on the ground, with codes indicating that it is a secret involving the United States and the “Five Eyes” (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand).
US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE PHOTO, SUPPLIED BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
This storage room at the Mar-a-Lago estate also contained boxes of classified documents, according to the indictment.
Employees text each other:
“Can we remove boxes in the business center?” There is no room for employees…
– There’s a little room left in the shower…
Trump is seen with authors and their publisher showing plans to attack a country (Iran, apparently). The documents are obviously classified top secret ; he has no right to have them in his possession; he was informed of it; the people present with him (at least five people) have no security clearance… He doesn’t care.
Why show them that?
Sort of like showing off your Corvette collection.
– Look at me if it’s beautiful … I have a yellow, too! No, but imagine how it should be big to have this!
All conversation with these authors is recorded. It clearly shows this: he knows very well that these documents are classified. He says he had the power to declassify them during his presidency, but not then (in July 2021).
The following month, he met with people from his political action committee. He shows them a classified map. “I shouldn’t do this, don’t get too close to stare at her…”
As if to say: hey, look what I have in my hands, nobody has that except me… Even I don’t have the right… Come and see, but stay away…
“Have you ever eaten that, polar bear?” (memorable reply by François Papineau in Hidden defect). Yes, sir, I have this in my freezer, it’s totally illegal. I’ll open the lid for you, but don’t touch!
Possession and transportation of these documents is in itself an offence. But if it was inadvertently, or even being a little naughty, there would never have been an accusation. Mike Pence and Joe Biden, who had some classified documents of much lesser importance, returned them themselves without being asked.
Me speaking to you, I have a book on magic borrowed from my primary school in 1976. I keep forgetting to return it. And I still have to practice, because my conjuring isn’t perfect.
Trump has been asking for the documents for months and months. At some point, the people at the Archives saw that they would never get them. They called the FBI.
He gave them some. He hid others. He made his lawyers believe that he had handed them over. But first he unsubtly asked them if he could just ignore the request. Or maybe hide them. Or destroy them?
In the end, it took this raid by the police to get the documents.
He had in his possession at least 30 documents classified as “top secret”, that is to say documents whose disclosure could cause “exceptionally serious” damage to national security.
At least 98 were “secret”: the disclosure of which is likely to cause serious damage to national security.
And dozens of “simply” confidential documents.
If Trump is charged with obstruction of justice, it is because he maneuvered to conceal these documents, even after receiving a formal order from the Florida grand jury. Grand jury of citizens who authorized those charges, by the way.
Thousands of people were present at Mar-a-Lago, the Florida estate of the Trumps, while all these documents were easily accessible to a nosy mind – or maybe a spy, it does exist!
Nuclear capability, country’s military weaknesses, secret sources, military plans, exchanges with foreign intelligence, etc. It’s all highly explosive.
Trump himself in 2018 (the indictment reminds us) had insisted on the importance of the protection of secret information, and the risk of its dissemination. He was obviously thinking of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, quite innocent compared to this mass classified by the intelligence agencies.
That didn’t stop him from leaving the boxes loosely lying around here and there, without hierarchy, comically piled up in various corners.
For what ?
To say: I am powerful.