SWEAR FEAR: A judge may make Trump do this and he’s flipping out over it

Donald Trump’s legal team has had searches carried out on some of his properties to make sure the former president is no longer in (allegedly illegal) possession of government documents, but he doesn’t seem too confident as a judge ponders whether to require a signed and sworn statement saying they’ve all been turned over.

The U.S. Justice Department is asking for Trump or one of his representatives to be required to sign a sworn statement regarding any further missing documents.

If he swears he’s turned everything over, the former president opens himself up to perjury charges, if additional documents are located.

The DOJ has already prevailed in having Trump’s special master removed from the case, and his attorneys have hired an independent team to search over some of his properties in case there are still any papers hidden.

Trump himself has shared a right-wing news article admitting that at least two classified documents were found in another search, defending him on the basis that his legal team handed those docs over to the FBI and misstating that he was being investigated under the Presidential Records Act — the same legislation that Trump keeps falsely claiming protects him.

PoliticusUSA is reporting that Judge Beryl A. Howell is holding a closed-door hearing with the DOJ to consider requiring Trump’s representatives to swear all the improperly removed materials had been turned over. The report said:

If Trump and his office swear that there are no more classified documents in their possession, and there are, that will lead to criminal charges. If Trump refuses to swear that all materials belonging to the US government have been turned over, that will be an indication that Trump is knowingly refusing to comply with the grand jury’s order from May.

As this is going on, Trump is having fits on TruthSocial, sharing reports like this whine from TownHall:

Also, Trump was the president who could declassify anything at will, which makes it nearly impossible to indict a former president for mishandling classified materials, unlike Hillary Clinton, who was guilty of that crime but was never charged because she’s a Democrat.

Notably, as POLITICO reported at the time, the crimes named in the search warrant were Espionage Act violations and obstruction of justice — not “mishandling classified materials” or “Presidential Records Act” violations as the TownHall story falsely suggested and Trump keeps alluding to.

Trump blew up in all-caps rage, declaring the Justice Department “out of control,” and claiming it was being “weaponiz[ed]” against him, as he deflected to the Twitter Files nothingburger that he claims has destroyed lives.

He also raged about what he refers to as the “Clinton Socks Case,” which refers to the question of whether recordings of interviews, which Bill Clinton apparently kept in a sock drawer at one point, were presidential records that must be turned over, or personal records that could be kept.

MSNBC did an explainer on that case earlier this year — the short of it is that, a court determined the records in that case were personal, not presidential, and affirmed that the Presidential Records Act defines ‘personal’ records as those of “‘purely private or nonpublic character.”

Trump’s rage suggest he knows full well he’s between a rock and a hard place, and is not excited about having to make a decision.