It Just Gets Worse

And there are a couple of stunning admissions. The first is Team Trump's telling Judge Dearie that their side has no index or any other records of what was in the boxes. 2/

— Lisa Rubin (@lawofruby) September 20, 2022

Renato Mariotti pointed to this very error earlier this month:

No competent attorney would have approved the production of documents to the government without reviewing and cataloguing the documents provided. You have to know what it is that you’re producing and what, if anything, is still being held back. While attorneys may not have been able to review certain classified documents, the existence of those documents should not have been a surprise to Trump’s team. They should have been aware that they were producing classified materials, raised that issue to NARA before producing, and produced them in a secure manner.

When I was a legal assistant I worked on several civil cases involving document production.  In one case I was ushered into a large room full of all the documents related to construction of a building on UT campus.  I had 8 hours to find what I wanted and tag it for copying.  I then spent weeks collating, categorizing, analyzing, and cataloging those documents to turn them into exhibits for a week of depositions we conducted in the case.  We cataloged all those documents, and I guarantee UT kept a list of all the documents they gave us.  We kept lists of documents we produced to opposing counsel in every case I worked on. To not do so would have been the grossest kind of malpractice.  I really can't believe Trump's lawyers admitted that in open court, except that they were not the lawyers who had anything to do with Trump during the NARA negotiations, the DOJ negotiations, the service of the subpoena or the service of the search warrant.

A catalog of the documents would have told them what the FBI took, if only by absence.

The second -- and more significant -- concession was Trusty telling Dearie that he can't represent that Trump actually declassified any documents yet because he hasn’t seen the documents DOJ considers classified. 4/

— Lisa Rubin (@lawofruby) September 20, 2022

A) he may not have clearance to see those documents, which proves the "irreparable harm" claim the DOJ made to the 11th Circuit (and which Trusty tried to refute before the same court).

B) What does seeing the documents have to do with whether or not Trump "declassified" them? What, they show them to Trump one by one and he says "Oh, yeah, I declassified that one, I remember it. I gave it a little wine and got it drunk and then took it to my bedroom and declassified the shit out of it!"

But wouldn’t his client -- aka Trump -- remember what he purportedly declassified and/or have kept a record of when and how he did it? And without such a record showing the what and when, how can Team Trump ever argue, much less prove, he declassified anything? 6/

— Lisa Rubin (@lawofruby) September 20, 2022

In other words, the only evidence of this declassification is Trump's word. Which, even if he wasn't a serial liar infamous for his fleeting relationship with the truth, would mean nothing in this legal context.

"It's important to look at Trump's arguments in the Mar-a-Lago case as an extension of the Big Lie that led to 1/6...The throughline between them is that Trump continues to assert that he has equal presidential power to the current...president"- @AshaRangappa_ w/ @NicolleDWallace pic.twitter.com/0tJH4WMjyP

— Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) September 20, 2022

Which is pretty much the argument Judge Cannon bought into; but nobody else seems inclined to purchase.

But the truly worst part of this is how cavalierly and insecurely Trump handled these documents.  Even he doesn't know what he had (does anyone believe he catalogued them, or had staff do it?  Which would implicate them in a breach of national security, so they'd better hope they didn't/are never identified.).  We can appreciate Trump's legal problems; but the country has something of a national security nightmare on its hands, and the rest of the world is wondering what we lost and, more importantly, who has it now?