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Going Nuclear
Author: BobR    Date: 08/17/2022 12:51:24

The hardest thing about writing a blog today is narrowing the focus. There's the predicted Liz Cheney primary loss... there's the legislative successes of President Biden... there's Rudy Ghouliani's lost cause to avoid testifying in GA.... So much stuff.

However, the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lardo is just too rich to ignore, especially with all the sub-stories swirling around the main one. As this has developed, TFG's excuses morphed from "It's a hoax" to "they planted evidence" to "I declassified them" to "everybody does it" to JOE BIDEN'S LAPTOP! HER EMAILS!! PELOSI!!!

Those of us who don't think of TFG as the next coming of Christ aren't the least bit surprised. Okay, maybe a bit happily surprised that his hubris may finally do him in (although he's managed to get away with SO much so far). After all, he's carelessly leaked secrets before:
A former senior intelligence official with firsthand knowledge told NBC News that Trump did indeed tweet a highly classified image taken by a secret spy satellite, as many experts suspected at the time. And in doing so, the official and others said, Trump gave U.S. adversaries keen insights into the U.S. capabilities to spy from above.

“The president tweeted a picture of an Iranian missile launch site that showed a failed ICBM test launch that everybody acknowledged was a highly classified picture taken from space,” former national security adviser John Bolton, who was in Poland when it happened, told NBC News Monday.

His behavior rubbed off on his inner circle, as classified documents were found in the Eisenhower Office Building ladies' room. Because of course someone just walked down the hall with a folder marked "classified", and thumbed through it while pinching out a deuce in the bowl. So not only were these sensitive documents classified, they were now e-coli-fied, which is a perfect metaphor for his entire presidency.

There is some speculation as to why TFG took them down to his secondary place of employment. Former attorney and coffee-boy Michael Cohen believes it was a hedge against jail time:
Michael Cohen, who was once former President Trump's personal lawyer, believes Trump kept top-secret documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence as potential bargaining chips that he could leverage if he were ever at risk of going to jail.

"My belief is that he was going to use it as a bargaining chip, as a get-out-of-jail-free card," Cohen said on CNN. "The second that they put him in handcuffs, he'll turn around and say, 'You don't seem to understand. I have the documentation showing, for example, where our nuclear launchpads are, or other information — sensitive national security information."

Cohen painted a scenario in which Trump would threaten to have his "loyal supporters" release the classified information he had kept to Russia, Iran, or "whoever it might be." He added that he didn't believe Trump "cared about this country."

Ironic, of course, that it might have the effect of actually sending him to jail instead. This is becoming more likely as he's gotten even MORE toxic, because he's having trouble finding lawyers to represent him. Maybe it's because of how he never pays anyone, and throws everyone else under the bus (including former lawyer Cohen).

He still has his True Believers, and his propaganda "News" outlet:
The Five co-host Will Cain on Monday tried out a relatively new tactic to characterize what former President Donald Trump could have done to justify the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago. Whatever Trump’s error, Cain said, “it better be egregious” and “more than the nuclear codes.”

[...]

“It’s not truly about declassified materials or classified materials. It is not even really about the Espionage Act, which, by the way, can encompass and does in the statute, very minor grievances like not giving information over to the National Archives. Not that you are a super spy with the nuclear codes, but that you just didn’t simply comply with the National Archives. It’s not about any of that,” Cain claimed.

“It is a blank slate that allows the DOJ to find something, anything, to disqualify Donald Trump for running for president—to either disqualify him in a long, drawn-out legal case that ends up at the Supreme Court or simply in the American public’s mind,” the Fox News host continued.

“And if that is the case… it better be egregious. It better be more than the nuclear codes, which—let’s be real—change when the administration changes. It better be egregious,” Cain said, repeating a talking point he had delivered earlier in the day.

Of course no judge is going to sign a search warrant on a former president for a "fishing expedition". This is serious stuff. Adding more to the irony of the whole thing is just how much more screwed he's going to be because he expanded the penalty for spilling state secrets from 1 year to 5 years when he was president in an effort to go after Clinton and/or Pelosi.

The schadenfreude is simply delicious.
 

6 comments (Latest Comment: 08/17/2022 14:43:47 by BobR)
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