(Photo
by
Win
McNamee/Getty
Images)
Who
could
have
predicted
that
the
same
people
who
spent
five
years
howling
to
put
Hillary
Clinton
in
email
jail
over
her
basement
server
would
be
ludicrously
careless
with
classified
material?
Oh,
everybody?
Right.
In
the
past
24
hours,
there
have
been
four
stories
about
the
contents
of
the
15
boxes
of
purloined
presidential
material
retrieved
from
Mar-a-Lago
last
week
by
the
National
Archives.
The
former
president
has
been
litigating
the
scope
of
the
Presidential
Records
Act
in
his
dispute
with
the
January
6
Select
Committee.
And
although
the
statute
has
no
enforcement
mechanism
—
because
it
never
occurred
to
anyone
that
America
would
elect
a
totally
lawless
president
—
it
seems
certain
that
Trump
will
contribute
further
caselaw
on
the
issue.
After
breaking
the
story
last
week,
the
Washington
Post
revealed
yesterday
that
Trump
walked
out
of
the
White
House
with
a
trove
of
documents,
including
love
letters
from
North
Korean
despot
Kim
Jong
Un,
and
a
letter
from
Barack
Obama
to
his
successor.
He
also
pocketed
a
replica
of
Air
Force
One,
which
he
displayed
at
his
Florida
club,
a
mock
up
bollard
from
his
supposedly
unscalable
border
wall,
and
the
map
which
infamously
doctored
with
a
Sharpie
to
make
his
predictions
about
the
path
of
Hurricane
Dorian
“true.”
The
paper
also
broke
the
news
that
the
National
Archives
had
referred
the
matter
to
the
Justice
Department
to
see
if
Trump
had
broken
any
laws
by
…
violating
the
law.
Right
on
cue,
the
New
York
Times
reported
that
there
were
classified
materials
in
the
retrieved
cache,
although,
as
the
paper
points
out,
Trump
had
the
power
to
declassify
anything
he
wanted
until
January
20,
2021.
According
to
the
Times,
the
DOJ
promptly
kicked
the
matter
back
to
the
Archives,
telling
the
agency
to
have
its
own
inspector
general
investigate
the
matter.
The
Times
also
noted
Trump’s
habit
of
ripping
up
documents
at
the
White
House,
forcing
his
own
staff
to
pull
scraps
from
the
trash
and
sift
through
so
called
“burn
bags”
for
presidential
material,
handing
them
over
to
the
Archives
to
be
taped
back
together
as
necessary.
Which
was
right
in
time
for
Axios’s
morning
scoop
from
an
upcoming
book
by
Times
reporter
Maggie
Haberman
that
“staff
in
the
White
House
residence
periodically
discovered
wads
of
printed
paper
clogging
a
toilet
—
and
believed
the
president
had
flushed
pieces
of
paper.”
Which
is
pretty
much
prima
facia
evidence
of
intent
to
destroy
a
document.
And
also
a
cosmic
callback
to
the
White
House
Plumbers
that
makes
you
wonder
if
we’re
living
in
a
broken
simulation.
Naturally
Trump
rounded
out
the
news
cycle
by
issuing
a
statement
of
denial,
padded
with
attacks
on
all
his
enemies.
“The
media’s
characterization
of
my
relationship
with
NARA
is
Fake
News.
It
was
exactly
the
opposite!
It
was
a
great
honor
to
work
with
NARA
to
help
formally
preserve
the
Trump
Legacy,”
he
said,
sidestepping
the
issue
of
how
the
items
came
to
be
unlawfully
retained
in
the
first
place
and
promising
that
the
items
would
soon
be
on
display
in
his
presidential
library,
allowing
the
public
“to
view
my
Administration’s
incredible
accomplishments
for
the
American
People.”
The
former
president
insists
that
he
had
been
“told”
—
many
people
are
saying!
—
that
he
was
“under
no
obligation
to
give
this
material
based
on
various
legal
rulings
that
have
been
made
over
the
years.”
He
probably
meant
to
specify
which
legal
rulings
he’d
been
“told”
about,
but
he
got
distracted
by
the
inevitable
diatribe
about
“Crooked
Hillary
Clinton”
and
her
emails,
the
minor
scandal
when
the
Clintons
had
to
return
gifts
improperly
retained,
and
“We
won’t
even
mention
what
is
going
on
with
the
White
House
in
the
current,
or
various
past
administrations.”
He
characterizes
Haberman’s
scoop
as
“another
fake
story”
cooked
up
“by
a
reporter
in
order
to
get
publicity
for
a
mostly
fictitious
book.”
Or
perhaps
she
is
in
cahoots
with
dastardly
Democrats,
“just
using
this
and
the
Unselect
Committee
of
political
hacks
as
a
camoflauge
[sic]
for
how
horribly
our
Country
is
doing
under
the
Biden
Administration.”
Then
the
twice-impeached
politician
who
campaigned
on
a
promise
to
LOCK
HER
UP
his
political
opponent
for
mishandling
classified
emails,
complained
that
“In
the
United
States
there
has
unfortunately
become
two
legal
standards,
one
for
Republicans
and
one
for
Democrats.
It
should
not
be
that
way!”
And
he’s
absolutely
right.
But
perhaps
not
in
the
way
he
thinks.
National
Archives
asks
Justice
Dept.
to
investigate
Trump’s
handling
of
White
House
records
[Wapo]
Archives
Found
Possible
Classified
Material
in
Boxes
Returned
by
Trump
[NYT]
Haberman
book:
Flushed
papers
found
clogging
Trump
WH
toilet
[Axios]
Liz
Dye
(@5DollarFeminist)
lives
in
Baltimore
where
she
writes
about
law
and
politics.