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WASHINGTON POST The Washington Post: The 5-Minute Fix ... Keeping up with politics is easy now ... August 25th 2022 Original article: https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=596a649cade4e20ee371b859&s=6307e67c1930ae1d2063d6b3&linknum=4&linktot=53 Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess | ||
The Washington Post
The 5-Minute Fix ... Keeping up with politics is easy now.
By Amber Phillips ... with Caroline Anders
“Mar-a-Lago is a big problem.”
That quote is from someone in Donald Trump’s inner circle, speaking to my Post colleagues. What did this person mean by that?
Well, there are more than a few reasons that Trump keeping highly secret documents at his clubhouse could haunt him politically — and maybe legally.
All year, Trump resisted handing over these documents to the FBI: The government gave Trump multiple opportunities to quietly resolve this issue. But Trump resisted, to the point where his allies feared he was “essentially daring” the FBI to come after them, report The Post’s Josh Dawsey, Carol Leonnig, Jacqueline Alemany and Rosalind Helderman. It seems Trump thought he didn’t need to hand over the documents, that they were somehow his. The law says otherwise.
Trump broke the Presidential Records Act law pretty egregiously: simply by taking any official White House document with him when he left office. (All presidential records are supposed to be preserved and handed over to the National Archives.)
(Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News)
(Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News)
Trump was warned. Toward the end of his term, before he had even departed for Mar-a-Lago, the National Archives was asking for boxes that it knew Trump had at the White House, and even Trump’s lawyers agreed that the former president needed to give the documents back, report The Post’s Josh and Jacqueline, citing the National Archives’ conversations with Trump’s lawyers.
It’s not just that Trump took some papers, it’s that the documents he took appear to be incredibly sensitive. Someone familiar with the search told my colleagues that the documents at Mar-a-Lago were “among the most sensitive secrets we hold.” They may have included nuclear secrets. Republicans such as Rep. Chris Stewart (Utah), who initially came to Trump’s defense, have backtracked. “I mean, if he had actual Special Access Programs — do you know how extraordinarily sensitive that is? That’s very, very sensitive. If that were actually at his residence, that would be a problem,” he told Politico.
To do its search, the FBI convinced a court of three potential crimes Trump could have committed. It’s still not clear whether Trump will be charged for mishandling classified documents, or if the government just wanted the sensitive information back.
Trump has yet to share a convincing reason he took these documents: Initially, Republicans were united in their defense of Trump, asserting that the FBI’s search was politically motivated. But they got noticeably quieter after hearing about the potential severity of the allegations. Trump has yet to produce evidence that he declassified the documents, if he even had the ability to.
Most voters want the investigation to continue: NBC News found that 57 percent of voters say the investigation into Trump’s alleged wrongdoing should continue. (Though that is mostly made up of Democrats. Republicans overwhelmingly support Trump.)
Of course, all this could have the opposite effect and motivate Trump’s base to rally around him. But it’s notable that as Trump considers launching his presidential campaign, one of his allies is talking to the press about how big of a problem Mar-a-Lago is for Trump.
How problematic are these abortion bans for the GOP?
(The Washington Post)
(The Washington Post)
This week, four more states are banning abortion in most cases: Idaho, Texas and Tennessee today, and North Dakota tomorrow. As the Associated Press notes, most of these states already found ways to tightly limit abortion after Roe v. Wade, but their trigger laws will go into effect now for good measure.
All these bans mean that near-total abortion restrictions are even further-reaching now. Like:
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