Psychological projection is the stock in trade of our American ruling class. You can see this in the way the D.C. Deep State always treated President Trump as a totally illegitimate bum; especially as regards their most precious possession, classified material. Recall the furor when Trump revealed some Israeli information to the Russian foreign minister, in a bid to get help from them in the Middle East.

Such top-secret horse trading goes on all the time, yet since Trump is a bum, he cannot be allowed the traditional power with respect to classified documents that all Presidents have, as in Navy v. Egan.

Secrets are only for the bureaucrats to leak as they please with no consequences, like the Flynn/Kislyak phone call, or to simply ignore when it involves their friends, such as Hillary’s email scandal.

Neither James Comey nor the guy, John Huber, finally appointed by Jeff Sessions to look into the Hillary emails, even bothered to convene a grand jury. The whole  fake Huber investigation is particularly galling. After Trump demanded action for years, all his DoJ did was appoint a guy who stayed in Utah and reviewed a few files.   

But Donald Trump, no secrets for him. As soon as he left office, Joe Biden cancelled the usual classified briefings all former Presidents get. Then the hunt was on to nail him for having classified/declassified documents; something all former Presidents routinely possess.

Biden’s DoJ had no trouble getting a grand jury for Trump, barely a year after he left office, and it was in the wrong venue, risking a dismissal of the whole case right away. Even Andrew McCarthy figured out this was all wrong. If somebody was unhappy with Trump procrastinating the work of cleaning up his archives and wanted to go to court, the proper venue was Florida, not D.C.

Somebody high up in the Deep State must have conceived a plan and needed a craven Swamp Creature like Judge Beryl Howell of the D.C. District to approve the dirty work. And is the National Archives (NARA) really the instigating party here, or were they just the cat’s paw for that somebody in the Deep State?

Everyone has already heard a lot about the Presidential Records Act (PRA) and the Espionage Act, but bear with me. Under the PRA, the NARA already works with a White House in sorting out what is and is not a Presidential record while a President is in office; so the day he leaves the White House, the stuff that goes with him is presumably not a Presidential record, but personal/business/political etc.

There are also “agency records,” routine copies of documents the White House did not generate, and nothing the NARA is supposed to bother with, either. Their job is to collect and archive the public records particular to a President as public history, rightfully owned by the American people. Agency records, whether or not classified, are always backed up with the originating agency, so by law, not part of NARA’s job. From what I can infer from the indictment, all but two of the 31 documents in question are agency records. The other two may have a personal notation made by Trump or another foreign leader. Is that what all the fuss is about?

Until this last year, absolutely no one thought it was the job of NARA to police former Presidents, nor anybody else, for classified documents they might still have. That is up to the actual security agencies under the Espionage Act, which is almost a dead letter these days, so rarely is it applied.

Under the language of 18 USC 793 someone having a document related to “the national defense” and “willfully” retaining it, must instead deliver it to the “the officer or employee” entitled to receive it. That surely cannot mean the National Archives. It means the military or security agency that produced it and genuinely wants it back.

Quite likely a Deep State somebody has had a plan to get Trump for quite a while, but looking at the Jack Smith “speaking indictment,” there may be even more. It’s conceivable somebody launched a post-Presidential spying operation on Trump, to go with the pre-Presidential Trump spying-Crossfire Hurricane.

Consider the timeline:

July 2021, at Trump's Bedminster Club, where the leaked audio tape came from, Trump showed a writer, a publisher, and two Trump staffers a classified document. In August or September, also at Bedminster, Trump showed someone from his PAC a map. How and when did the FBI know about this?

On Jan 17, 2022, Trump provided an initial 15 boxes of records to the National Archives which contained 197 documents with classified markings. On February 9, NARA made a criminal referral to the FBI.

On March 30, 2022, the FBI opened an investigation into unauthorized documents at Mar-a-Lago.

On April 26, the DC grand jury convened and issued a subpoena for all classified documents on May 11.

On June 3, Trump’s attorneys provided 38 more documents to the grand jury, certifying that was all.

But Trump had Walt Nauta, his personal aide, move 64 boxes from the Mar-a-Lago storage room to Trump's office around June 2. Then he moved only 30 of them back to the storage room, that being all the Trump attorneys searched. This is the bonehead move that has Trump in actual legal trouble.

In July 2022, the grand jury obtained video surveillance of Mar-a-Lago and issued the infamous search warrant of Mar-a-Lago for August 8^th. Suspiciously, the redacted search affidavit doesn’t mention the video.  Nor does the indictment mention they searched Melania’s wardrobe and even brought in a safe cracker to open an office safe which turned out to be empty. Why would they have been tipped off to specific targets?

That’s also incredibly fast and effective work for the federal government. They were way ahead of Trump all along. If the FBI had been wiretapping Trump and Mar-a-Lago, it would explain their prescience. 

And if they were, they may use an aggressive theory of investigative "attenuation" so they don't have to reveal the extent of their spying to the defense counsel. If that's the case, let's hope Trump's lawyers do aggressive discovery and there are a lot more FBI whistleblowers out there. 

Frank Friday is an attorney in Louisville, KY.

Image: Pixabay