We Don't Know What We Don't Know

BREAKING: It’s the empty classified folders that are of most concern. Where are the contents? Trump has not addressed that at all in all his bluster and obfuscation. What were you doing with these? https://t.co/a4ZtliafGp

— Andrew Weissmann 🌻 (@AWeissmann_) September 2, 2022

emptywheel points out that what the public doesn't know, the government may:

Note: When the original NARA referral described "unfoldered" documents, it means they don't have the classified covers described as empty here. So it could be Trump turned them in.

Or not.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://t.co/QaK1UM7HH3

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) September 2, 2022

And I'm old enough to remember the old "interoffice memo" envelopes. Legal sized, covered with boxes so you could indicate the recipient, cross out the last one, and use it again almost ad-infinitum (they usually fell apart before the boxes filled up). I can only imagine classified documents are not just slipped into any old cover, contents unrecorded or noted.  Those covers ain't exactly for interoffice distribution, after all:

Per government source: if there is an empty folder that was originally used to properly store classified records, there will be documentation indicating who put the records in that folder, why they were placed there, and what the records were.

— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) September 2, 2022

So that makes sense to me.

None of this, of course, helps Trump.

Me via @PostOpinions:

Trump’s “I declassified them” defense for having national security files at Mar-a-Lago is factually preposterous and legally irrelevant.

But what Trump’s defenders miss is that it would be only *more* damning if he actually did:https://t.co/C6j5VM4cdx

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) September 2, 2022

Trump’s supporters seem to think that, once again, the president has outfoxed his critics. But imagine for a moment that such an order existed (it doesn’t), whether or not it’s relevant to Trump’s potential legal liability (it isn’t). That would mean that Trump declassified some of our most sensitive national security secrets not because he wanted the public to know about them, and not because he thought they were wrongly classified; he did it — if he did it — because he was lazy. In this scenario — this defense, such as it might be — he wanted to make it easier to take what might be the crown jewels of our national security state back and forth with him without having to do what every other government official does; that is, use a “secure compartmentalized information facility,” or SCIF. Secret technology that we don’t want to share with China? Too bad. Human intelligence that could be used to smoke out American agents in foreign governments? Not his problem. Specific details about the deployment of U.S. troops overseas? Whatever.

Trump’s “defense” would mean that he committed what would have to be the most stunning and indefensible systematic breach of our national security not just by any president in American history, but perhaps by any person. Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning may be responsible for putting a greater number of government secrets into the public domain, but they at least had substantive reasons for doing so — whether or not we agree with them. In Trump’s version of events, breaching our national security and potentially exposing secrets happened simply because he couldn’t be bothered to handle classified information correctly. It’s not quite the “Twinkie defense,” the standard for wildly improbable justifications for improper behavior, but it’s not far off.

George Conway points out Trump has nothing but lies left: 

But Trump is going to have some issues: “He wants to go on the offense. The problem is he has no weapons to go on the offense with. And he has no legal arguments. He has no defense. He only has lies.” https://t.co/CXfoHaY7cc

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) September 2, 2022

It's worth pointing out that the "declassified" lie is as baseless as the election fraud lies Trump actually tried to go to court on. In one infamous case Rudy Giuliani actually confessed in open court that he had no evidence of fraud. Even Giuliani knew lies and bombast wouldn't stand up in court.  Trump's lawyers know that now.  As many have pointed out, nowhere in the "major 4th Amendment" case in Florida did Trump's lawyers allege the documents had been declassified.  They even acknowledged a special master would need security clearance to review the documents.  Why won't they take up Trump's "argument"?  For the same reason Trump lost 60+ cases in 2020, and Giuliani wouldn't allege fraud when pressed on the issue.

They got nothin'.

Trump's lies about the election prompted a mob to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021.  Trump's lies now won't be any kind of bulwark against the prosecutions about to be visited upon him.  And I really don't think the majority of American voters want to cast a ballot for the guy standing in the dock answering for his violations of the Espionage Act.  "Give him four more years to do what he did to government in the last four years" is a pretty damning campaign issue.