In his brief press conference on Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland gave no real impression of the seriousness of the actual documents sought by the Department of Justice in former President Donald Trump's residence at Mar-a-Lago.
What we had known prior to Thursday night was that the documents were related to the Presidential Records Act of the 1970s and the fact that the National Archives were demanding the remaining documents in Trump's possession. The raid took place even though Trump's lawyers had been working with Federal agents during the months preceding it.
A recent report by the Washington Post strongly suggests that the information requested by the FBI were more than just presidential documents. It seems that they were a matter of grave National security.
Classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought in a search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence on Monday, according to people familiar with the investigation.
Experts in classified information said the unusual search underscores deep concern among government officials about the types of information they thought could be located at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and potentially in danger of falling into the wrong hands.
The people who described some of the material that agents were seeking spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. They did not offer additional details about what type of information the agents were seeking, including whether it involved weapons belonging to the United States or some other nation. Nor did they say if such documents were recovered as part of the search. A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Justice Department and FBI declined to comment.
If that's the case then we're facing a major issue. In reality, we have many issues.
The first issue is: How did it take the government agencies 18 months after Trump quit office to discover that they had disappeared or were possibly kept in Trump's possession? If it's about our weapons or the weapons of another country, it's not something you'd want to forget about. I understand that Trump leaving with several boxes of documents is alarming, but somebody should have discovered this some time in the past. The information that is disclosed in this manner is highly sensitive, classified, and is protected by law for a reason.
The second issue is: If they're in Trump's possession but not the competent(?) hands of the intelligence community then Trump has made a big mistake in this instance. In the event that this situation is as serious as the Washington Post and their source suggests that it is, it is the kind of information that foreign governments will take any opportunity to get it. It's not something you just hide away and then forget about. If this proves to be true, and Trump is guilty of having this information, the Republican Party really needs to reconsider its position on Trump. The GOP tends to be focused on the nation's security and not actively working against it.
The third issue: If this is indeed as grave as the Justice Department's sources make it out to be, then why are they leaking this information to the media? This could very well get someone killed, change the balance of power in the world, and make some people's lives a nightmare… And they're leaking it to reporters like everyone should know about it.
It already seemed that the entire team involved in this incident was utterly unqualified, and somehow they've decided that they're committed to showing it.
Many people might be still skeptical due to these reasons:
- You don’t leak the fact that national security documents such as ones pertaining to nuclear secrets are being circulated around.
- It was generally believed that the Presidential Records Act was just an excuse, and many were hoping that something from January 6, 2021 would be part of the evidence uncovered by the federal authorities.
- If it is believed that Trump is in possession of this information, they should tell the members of Congress, especially the Republicans, on the committees with high security clearances about the situation as you can be certain that the Republicans will phone the head of their party to ask him to get them back to D.C. in a hurry.
The media and the FBI have both done fantastic jobs debasing themselves in the past six years. Neither institution is trusted by the American people, and for legitimate reasons. The FBI sought a mostly fake dossier and had agents who admitted to biases and agendas against Trump. The media has for the past six years told us that the “walls are closing in” after every new piece of information that came out, which, in many cases, were similar to the false dossier.
If even a small portion of this story is true, then we have a huge issue to deal with. However, it's not a big deal since the people who criticize Trump have damaged their credibility prior to getting to this point, and the people who back Trump would defend him even in the event that he launched all of our nuclear arsenal from 5th Avenue.
