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The valid, necessary search of Mar-a-Lago by FBI agents in Florida, found not only evidence of criminal behavior, but also possession of documents that bring serious questions of treason by a disgraced, corrupt president

By DOUG THOMPSON
August 22, 2022

Back in what now feels like medieval times, I taught part-time at a school called “The American Campaign Academy,” a political operation founded and supported by the Republican Party. My classes tried to teach workable ways to promote candidates in a way that pushed the limits of the files and laws that were supposed to govern Congressional campaigns around the country.

“Your job is to protect the candidate and, if necessary, the blame if and when they get into trouble on an issue or through their personal behavior,” I told the students.

“How you feel on issues is unimportant,” I said. “It is your job to make the candidate’s beliefs work and, if they don’t, be the fall guy (or woman) who takes the heat for their failures.”

Potential press secretaries would sometimes ask: “How far do we go?”

“As far as it takes,” I said. In one class, a student asked for an example.

“G. Gordon Libby,” I answered. “He protected Richard Nixon and sent to jail protecting the secrets of the Watergate scandal.” Then, of course, I would tell them to ignore that advice. I had covered Watergate as a reporter and hoped that the corruption of Richard Nixon would never again be part of the American political system, especially at the presidential level.

I was wrong. Nixon, facing impeachment, resigned in disgrace and was pardoned for his crimes by President Gerald Ford, a Congressman who became Vice President when Nixon’s VP, a corrupt politician also resigned in disgrace.

“I thought pardoning Nixon would help the nation heal,” Ford said afterward after he lost his bid for election for a full term after assuming the presidency. He was wrong too.

Ford, a nice man caught up in a national scandal and serious threat to the Constitution and our democracy, tried to do what he thought was “the right thing.” The president that followed, peanut farmer and one-time member sailor who served with the founder of America’s “nuclear Navy, ” promised to “never tell America a lie” and lasted just one term, felled by the hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Iran and the toiled rescue attempt.

Presidents like Ford and Carter seem a world away from the presidency of a borderline crackpot like Donald J. Trump, whose corruption is topped only by his massive ego and childish desire for attention and control.

Nixon went down because Republicans and Democrats together put the needs of the nation, the Constitution, and democracy itself over politics and bickering. Now, the party of the elephant is little more than a craven cult eager to defend a treasonous criminal like Trump at all costs.

“One of the things we’re seeing is that Trump is demanding a specific kind of loyalty. It’s not just that you are loyal to Trump, but you are loyal to Trump’s most extreme versions of the lie,” former conservative Milwaukee radio host Charlie Sykes, a rare GOP, tells The Washington Post. “This is a significant misstep, but it feels like the kind of misstep that establishment Republicans have been making over the last six years, which is, ‘OK, people aren’t really going to buy the crazy. I can manage the crazy.’ Only to find out that the crazy is unmanageable.”

For many, the “crazy” is buying into Trump’s “Big Lie” that he somehow lost his 2020 re-election bid through non-existent fraud. Court after court, including a Supreme Court now packed with Trumpites, has ruled that no proof of fraud exists, but the lie continues.

But the search of Trump’s lavish Mar-a-Lago in Florida, found an even bigger lie, one that raises serious questions about his loyalty to this nation and its people. The Top Secret documents that he took, illegally, from the White House included compartmentalized nuclear weapons information that is never, ever, supposed to leave secured areas of the government and their existence now raises the question of whether or not we have a disgraced, corrupt former president who is also a traitor to America.

Newsweek reports that former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner feels “that Donald Trump is in really dangerous territory legally, and that the former president may have committed treason.”

The newsmagazine report continues:


Yet many Republicans, like House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, continue to castigate the FBI for executing a valid and legal search warrant that has uncovered these latest developments. They have even issued statements that could endanger the law enforcement agents who appear to have uncovered a traitor.

Are they traitors too? When you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas.

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Every Republican who echoes Trump's Big Lie is a traitor as well because they're not respecting democracy.

Great find on the graphic. I've never seen that one before.

Rep. Mike Turner told CBS News on Sunday that Trump may have kept classified documents to write a memoir.

The GOP needs to cut the crap. It is known that Trump doesn't read. Heck, Trump's daily presidential briefings were drawn in stick figures so that he could understand what was going on. (snark)

I'd be surprised if Trump can even write a sentence. None of his books were authored by him. Rumor hazzit that Trump is a functional illiterate.

For the Senior Member on the Senate Intelligence committee as Mike Turner is, to offer up the "writing a memoir" excuse is beyond the pale.

That's what we're witnessing as far as the Red Priests defending their idiot king.

I'm not too sure about "traitor" because that implies loyalty to some entity other than your country. I don't think Trump's brain comprehends "loyalty". Functionally, he's a spoiled ten year old who has been faking being an adult all his life. Some ten year olds collect dead insects. Some collect game cards. Trump collects top secret documents. "They are mine", as in "I grabbed them, so now they belong to me". Not so much for their contents, or their value when sold to our adversaries. Just because they represent some spurious idea he had about himself. And they are really cool and make him feel like an action movie hero. I really think a lot of people are overthinking this.

If his dad had not given him so much money, he would have been dead or institutionalized long ago. Like died in a car crash fleeing police after robbing a store.

Last night, Far-right writer John Solomon, who is one of Donald Trump's official representatives for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), released a May 10, 2022 letter on his JustTheNews.com website.

The letter from the National Archives and Records Administration Trump's lawyers states:


The letter is quite damning to Trump. Trump not only had classified records at Mar-a-Lago, not only had TS/SCI classified records, he had Special Access Program classified information. Those are our most sensitive secrets - and they were sitting in Trump's basement.

#TraitorTrump

I was about to post a thread about the continuing security threat that Trump poses, but this thread seemed to cover that ground.

I agree that his "motivation" for taking and keeping these documents is more likely ego, but not eliminating graft as an incentive. If he can make money off of it, or leverage it for gain, he'll do it.

Trump is practically the paradigm for a target for compromise by spies. He has an overweening ego, no national loyalty, money problems, access to information... the list is long. Moreover, he's sloppy and inattentive.

Mar-a-Lago is also an invitation to electronic intrusion. I'd be shocked if China doesn't have real-time access to those "security videos".

Michael Cohen, last weekend, suggested that Trump would use the docs as leverage for blackmail to not indict him.

The confiscation of the docs by the FBI took care of that scenario.

There is no proof he didn't make photocopies or digital copies of all those documents, and send them somewhere else for safe keeping. The documents themselves have zero value: It's the information in the documents that's important. I'm sure Trump had no interest in following the protocols our government uses for keeping that information secret. We already have copious evidence of that.

I think the only thing we can do now to safeguard from future leaks (blackmail efforts?) is to arrest Trump and hold him in high security with zero communication outside for the rest of his life. Draconian yes, but anything less is a lot more dangerous for the US. This is the sort of situation that most countries' intelligence services decide to save a lot of money and just kill the guy. The US doesn't do that, or at least they claim they don't. Or haven't recently. Or somebody else did it.

I think we need to modify the presidential requirements in the constitution: If you can't get a security clearance, you can't hold any office that requires one. This would affect who could run, and how succession would work.

Remember, Trump was not alone in viewing those docs in his basement - Trump’s “National Archives Representatives” Kash Patel and John Solomon were in and out that room too. THAT is why there was such urgency to get the docs back.