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A story about a pathetic man's downfall


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2 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

I've heard the word "documents" so much in the past two weeks that it's become one of those words that just sounds weird to me and is fucking annoying.

You think it's a coincidence that we're hearing the word "documents" over and over again and Rob "Making Copies" Schneider comes outta obscurity to talk about supporting Trump?  It's Big Paper, man.  They're making themselves relevant again.  

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4 minutes ago, SubliminalHorn said:

Does he or any magats think that we all think that that’s how the documents were found and not spread out to be photographed for evidence? 

His base is so regarded they think whatever he tells them to think.  He literally needs to clarify this shit for them.  He's one of them.

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4 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

Apparently the response from his attorneys is sue this hour, per CNN. 8 pm eastern. 

They don't actually have to respond, most likely.  It would be hard to respond to such a thorough pantsing.

Hearing tomorrow, 1pm.  Oughta be a shitshow.

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Quote

 

Where was this?

An immediate question is where, exactly, the photo was taken.

In its filing, the Justice Department orients the photo — the filing’s Attachment F — as follows:

“Certain of the documents had colored cover sheets indicating their classification status. See, e.g., Attachment F (redacted FBI photograph of certain documents and classified cover sheets recovered from a container in the ‘45 office’).”

The material shown, then, is from Trump’s personal office at Mar-a-Lago, but the photograph itself doesn’t appear to have been taken there.

Consider the detail in the lower left of the photo. We see three distinguishing elements: a busy carpet pattern, some sort of dark-blue, fringed fabric — perhaps a curtain — and white cupboards with a relief pattern. (Update: This appears to be a stylized filing cabinet.)

 

There are various photo galleries of Mar-a-Lago online (see the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s, for example), but there’s no obvious match for the elements shown in the photo. A picture of Trump’s office, tweeted by his former aide Stephen Miller last year, shows a very different aesthetic from the one in Attachment F.

The carpet certainly has the stain-hiding aesthetic common to hotels or event spaces such as Mar-a-Lago, but it’s not immediately clear where the picture was actually taken. (If you have insight into the photo’s location, let us know.)

 
 
 
 
 
 

Update: The Washington Post’s Aaron Schaffer notes that the carpet appears to match the one seen in photos shared by people who’d met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, including Florida state Rep. Anthony Sabatini (R) and Kyle Rittenhouse. Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara also confirmed the carpet as being from Mar-a-Lago in an interview, as a reader pointed out.

There is another good indicator that it was at Mar-a-Lago: In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday morning, Trump suggested that it was.

 
A post from Donald Trump on Truth Social. (Truth Social)

There is, of course, no indication that the FBI was trying to suggest that Trump had created a mess. Instead, investigators were doing what investigators do: documenting what they’d found.

 

How the government documented the scene

The photograph also includes at least two indicators of that documentation.

The first is the use of a photo scale, an instrument that can be laid down to allow observers to evaluate the size of objects in a photo. You can see it below the document at the lower center of the full photo.

 

Then there’s the small marker to the right of that document, the one that says “2A.”

 

This appears to be a reference to how investigators documented material recovered from Mar-a-Lago. The property receipt provided to Trump’s lawyers on the day of the search used number and letter codes to identify items taken. Item “2A” is listed as “Various classified/TS/SCI documents.” (More on those abbreviations in a moment.)

 
A section of the property receipt provided to Trump’s lawyers after the Mar-a-Lago search. (Department of Justice)

That receipt suggests that the displayed documents were found in the container listed as item 2: “Leatherbound box of documents.” That box doesn’t appear to be included in the photo.

 

What was found

Now we get to the heart of the matter: what investigators found.

Let’s start with that document at the bottom center of the photo. It has a cover sheet indicating that it is classified as “secret.” The government has default cover sheets for various classification levels, ranging from a blue “confidential” classification to an orange “top secret.”

 

You’ll notice that the documents with the “TOP SECRET/SCI” markings in the photo have a yellow border and not an orange one. Similarly, the document at the bottom center has an orangeish-red-bordered cover sheet (not a purely red one) and is marked “SECRET/SCI.” That “SCI” is important — as are other markings on the cover sheet that provide more information about the document’s classification.

 

“SCI,” for example, indicates that the material is considered “sensitive compartmented information” — information that is further restricted to a subgroup of those with the indicated top-level clearance (here, “secret”).

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Then there’s the “UP TO HCS-P/SI/TK” flag. “Up to” suggests that the document includes material reaching each of the subsequent levels of classifications.

  • “HCS-P” indicates material obtained from human sources, generally meaning informants or spies. (There’s more about the “-P” qualifier here.)
  • “SI” refers to communications intelligence, generally material gathered from surveillance of online or telephone sources.
  • “TK” is short for “talent keyhole,” generally referring to satellite-based surveillance.

Other documents shown in the photo have visible dates, which offer their own information.

 

Documents 1 and 2, for example, appear to be dated Aug. 26, 2018. (The resolution of the photograph provided by the Justice Department does not allow for much additional clarity.) It’s not clear what might have occurred on that day that Trump would have wanted to preserve. (Again: If you have insight, let us know.)

Those documents are both identified as classified, in this case written in text at the top of the sheet of paper. Document 1 is “confidential.” Document 2 is more complicated: “SECRET/ORCON-USGOV-NOFORN.” Those latter indicators mean that the originator of the material controls distribution (ORCON) and that it is excluded from being shared with foreign allies (NOFORN).

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Document 3 is more interesting. First, its classification marking was obscured by the government before publishing the photograph. Then there’s the date, which appears to be Wednesday, May 9, 2018. That day, Bloomberg News notes, was one day after Trump announced that the United States would be pulling out of the Iran nuclear agreement.

Most of the other documents are obscured or redacted, limiting how much we can learn. But there is that box at right, the one in which we can see a number of picture frames, one of which shows a Time magazine cover.

 

That cover is from the magazine’s March 4, 2019, issue, showing the crowded Democratic field that hoped to challenge Trump in the 2020 election. Notice the frame: Beveled and gold in color, it matches the framed pictures shown in Stephen Miller’s photo of Trump’s office.

Keeping Time magazine covers is very typical for Trump, who displayed magazine covers at his properties. Unlike other Time covers that he displayed, this one was real.

Furk, pictures didn't copy and paste. 

Here's a link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/31/trump-mar-a-lago-fbi-search-classified-documents/

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1 hour ago, SubliminalHorn said:

Does he or any magats think that we all think that that’s how the documents were found and not spread out to be photographed for evidence? 

Yep. And the "2A" card is a handwritten statement of the dotard's devotion to gun rights rather than an FBI evidence marker.

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7 hours ago, Gil Bang said:

Former President Donald Trump walks in and out of rooms at Mar-a-Lago just to receive applause from guests because he loves the attention, a British filmmaker who interviewed him there told "The Bulwark Podcast."

"What Trump does in Mar-a-Lago and why he loves it there so much is that he just walks around where people are having dinner just to get a round of applause," filmmaker Alex Holder told "The Bulwark Podcast" in an episode that aired on Tuesday.

"So he will just walk into the dinner area ... there will be a cheer, and then he will go out, and then he'll go back in again, and go out," Holder added. "He just loves that admiration." 

Holder interviewed the former president at Mar-a-Lago in March 2021 as part of his documentary, "Unprecedented." The series portrays the Trump family before, during, and after the 2020 presidential election.

The filmmaker had also interviewed Trump once in the White House on December 7, 2020, and once at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, in May 2021. 

In the podcast, Holder described the former president as a "simple, but very unusual" man, who has an "inability to understand why people don't like him unless he doesn't like them first."

"That is the world he lives in. He is incapable of understanding anything other than total and absolute admiration towards him," Holder said, adding that it was these qualities that made it "frustrating" to interview Trump. 

"You could never go deep with him," he said.

Trump has hosted opulent parties, political speeches, and fundraisers at his Mar-a-Lago estate since he bought the sprawling property for $8 million in 1985.

He turned Mar-a-Lago into a private club ten years later, and now charges members an annual fee of $14,000, with an additional $2,000 dining minimum.

Earlier this month the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago and seized about 20 boxes worth of material from the estate, including 11 sets marked as classified. 

 
 

Unprecedented?  Guy missed out.  Should have been Unpresidented.  

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Cartons?  Seriously?  That's what they're going with?  My usual Lobo sarcasm bullshit aside.....cartons?  Like on the side of the carton is gonna be a pic of the missing SCI docs with the caption "Have you seen me?"  -or- "Have you seen this document?  If so, please call..."   I went to mass this morning and then this shit?  We're not living in a fucking simulation?  The shit went missing and he calls it a fucking "carton"?  Fucking Fuck! where's the tylenol? 

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57 minutes ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

Did his new criminal defense lawyer write the response or the other yahoos?

Can't tell.  It's a pretty feeble response.  https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/64911367/58/trump-v-united-states/

For one thing, the original motion was rather unclear on what relief it sought, other than the appointment of a special master, which would do exactly what?

The government thus responded to everything:  special master, injunction against providing certain documents to investigative team, return of unspecified documents, etc.

They cited a whopping three attorney-client privilege cases in support of the special master and the government did a great job of explaining how executive privilege =/= attorney-client privilege.

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  • Bozo_Casanova changed the title to Poll: President Trump's Major Announcement


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