CLASSIFIED PROJECTION: Did Trump’s tit-for-tat documents tantrum just expose more potential crimes?
The former President of the United States, a projectionist who is being investigated for allegedly improperly removing government documents from the White House, refusing to return them when requested and ordered to do so, falsely claiming (through attorneys) he had returned them, and continuing to handle classified material improperly after multiple communications, is accusing his successor of similar and worse crimes.
Naturally, Trump is responding by pointing fingers and making wild accusations, many oftentimes being actual confessions.
One thing that Trump and recent history agree on is that there have routinely been disputes or questions about the possession of some documents or objects after a president leaves office, across party lines.
Where Trump’s version of the story diverges from reality, though, is that typically, presidents quickly return the items or settle the dispute — he’d rather pretend that it’s standard for them to do what he’s accused of doing, which is to stash the boxes in a storeroom and deny, deny, deny.
Now it is revealed that when President Biden’s attorneys were packing files from his personal office, they found some classified documents, and contacted the National Archives to make arrangements to turn them over.
Over the course of several posts on Truth Social, Trump accused Biden of giving or selling documents to China, and suggested that his own possession of classified documents was, in fact, less egregious than Biden’s, since Trump, as president, has the power to declassify.
(Reality: Trump is not the president, declassification is a process that must be carried out on paper, not telepathically, and the crimes named in court documents regarding the search of his property do not require the documents to be classified, only illegally retained.)
In one post, Trump makes the entirely unfounded allegation:
“Biden giving China Highly Classified Documents would be a bridge too far. I certainly wouldn’t do that. Not a good situation for our Country to be in!”
Early in the rant that would emerge over the course of several hours and posts, Trump started by ‘retruthing’ posts from his sycophant, former White House doctor, and Congressional ally Ronny Jackson.
Jackson alleged that Biden knew he was storing classified documents (Biden’s legal team says that the president was unaware the documents were in his office, and does not know the contents), and that he “still had his DOJ goons persecute Trump.”
(Reality: Biden has attempted to keep a professional distance from the Department of Justice’s decisions and investigations, and was not informed that the search warrant was being executed on Trump’s property.)
In another post that Trump ‘retruthed,’ Jackson alleged that Biden had “hidden” and “concealed” the documents ahead of midterm elections.
You can see Trump’s reposting of both of Jackson’s messages below.
He re-upped unproven right-wing allegations that Biden’s Think Tank has been accepting anonymous donations from China, even going so far as to allege a specific amount (though not so far as to offer even minimal supporting evidence) and to state baldly, “They saw the Classified Documents!”
He also re-upped the unsupported claim about Biden’s Think Tank receiving funds from China, and the false claim that China received classified information in return.
“Wow! The Biden Think Tank is funded by CHINA!!! Also, a V.P. cannot Declassify documents, which are covered by the Federal Records Act, which is Criminal and MUCH TOUGHER than the Presidential Records Act, which is NOT Criminal. A President, me, can Declassify. How much more information has China been given?”
Unsurprisingly, this is all revealed, and Trump’s temper explodes, just as the news breaks that the Justice Department’s investigation of the documents found at Mar-a-Lago is ramping up.
The Justice Department took their case to a judge last week, the Guardian reports, to require Trump’s attorneys to hand over additional information about who accessed documents in a 2022 search of multiple Trump properties:
“The department was given a general explanation from Trump’s lawyers at the time about who conducted the search…the department, unsatisfied with that accounting, last week convinced a federal judge in a sealed hearing to force Trump’s lawyers to give the names of the people who retrieved the documents with an intent to question them directly.”
