Orange Don would not have felt the need for revenge, and would most likely not have run for President in the first place.
It's tempting from a storytelling perspective to draw this conclusion, but SO much more goes into gearing up to run for the presidency than petty motivations like this for doing so. Think more of his financial/legal predicaments at the time, think of the dubious foreign associations he had made, think of his advisors/mentors being Roy Cohn and Roger Stone.
The Obama connection comes in being able to exploit his future followers underlying resentments in a way no other politician was willing to do, fearing loss of respect. Trump knew that ship had already sailed for him so he had nothing to lose in that regard.
According to insiders, Trump's main motivation was to take advantage of business opportunities from the increased publicity. He never expected or probably even wanted to win.
Chinese president Xi Jinping visits Saudi Arabia next week.
The plot thickens..."
The problem with speculating about this is if this "theory" gets thrown out there enough times, and then it turns out you are wrong, it will feed the conspiracy theory that this was all a Democratic hoax, and Biden weaponized the Justice Dept because Democrats are afraid they'll lose if Trump runs again.
In this situation I think the best thing to do is tone down the rhetoric, let the process run its course, and wait to see what happens.
It sounds like there was extensive dialogue that was happening between the Justice Department and the Trump camp prior to the raid. Based on that, I would give Garland the benefit of the doubt, and suggest that they knew what they were looking for, and had sound reasons to believe Trump possessed the documents. So I'm sure we'll get an explanation at some point.
"Trump may have broken some laws taking the top secret documents out of the WH, some people involved in national security, don't think he will get prosecuted especially if all the files are recovered."
When Trump left the Whitehouse with the documents in his possession, he was still the President of the United States. So the fact that he removed them is not the problem; its that he retained possession of the documents after the transition of power occurred.
The distinction may end up being important, because Republicans who are defending Trump are pointing to the fact that as President, he had the authority to declassify the documents any time he wanted, and they seem to be implying that may have happened. To me the implication seems implausible at best. I freely admit I don't know how the declassification of documents is accomplished, but it seems like there would be some type of formal process.
This could end up being a lot like the situation where thousands of e-mails that contained classified information were found on Anthony Weiner's laptop. As I recall, it took a LONG time to go through the process of determining when each document was classified, what level of classification there was, whether the documents were properly marked, whether they had been declassified, how they were declassified, and by whom, etc. And of course, there was a lot of disagreement along party lines regarding the answers to those questions.
I agree its unlikely there will be any serious criminal charges, not because it would be pointless or unwarranted, but because it seems like there just never are in Washington.
In this situation I think the best thing to do is tone down the rhetoric, let the process run its course, and wait to see what happens.
*******
While I agree with that sensibility, the conspiracy theorists ALREADY went off the rails when Mar-a-Lago raid happened. His supporters immediately threw out the notion that political opponents weaponized the Justice Dept. (Trump himself suggested the FBI might have planted incriminating documents, without offering any evidence.) and THAT led to the attack on the FBI which forced Garland to make a public statement.
Considering how Trump does business, what I suggested above isn't too far-fetched... but I'm waiting for a reasonable explanation from DoJ as well.
-C!
Edited by Charles Valderrama on 12 August 2022 at 4:40pm
I heard a political analyst talking about Trump's ability to declassify documents while he was the President. Supposedly, all he had to do was say "This is not classified" and it's a done deal. It's all at the will of the Supreme Power and all that...
Unbelievably, one of the flailing Republican para-factual du jour is all Trump had to do was want something declassified, and it was. And is. Retroactively if necessary. No process necessary, not even a word spoken.
Interesting strategy today.... "Those nuclear documents were planted... but also, it's okay if I took them because Obama did the same thing."
More lies from the master of lies... The Obama Presidential Library requested tons of materials pertaining to his presidency, NONE OF WHICH WERE CLASSIFIED, and all of which had been approved and released by the National Archives.
Trump is basically admitting he took pages of documents, many classified, many perhaps pertaining to nuclear.
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