Chuck Ardo for BuzzFlash: Were Trump's Hiding of Classified Documents Evidence of "to Russia With Love?"
(Don)
September 5, 2022
By Chuck Ardo
Even Bill Barr, Donald Trump’s own former Attorney General, said that there is no "legitimate reason" for why Trump had boxes of classified material stored at Mar-a-Lago. The execution of the court ordered search warrant should remind Americans of a question Republican Tennessee Senator Howard Baker asked during the Watergate hearings. But, it’s not so much “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” as it is why did he have them? Why wouldn’t he give them back” and what was he going to do with them? Trump supporting MAGA extremists may not care but the rest of us should.
While many of Trump’s defenders allege the operation was politically motivated that’s far from the truth. After previously finding 25 sets of highly classified materials, the Justice Department — following months of failed negotiations and a subpoena to Trump — was forced to seek a search warrant, which resulted in the FBI recovering 11 more sets of classified records; some not only marked top secret but some “sensitive compartmented information,” a special category meant to protect the nation’s most important secrets; the exposure of which could cause “exceptionally grave” damage to U.S. interests.
Why Trump had them, wouldn’t give them back and not knowing what he intended to do with them arouses grave concern, with Trump’s ties to Russia and deference to Vladimir Putin chief among them.
Long before he became President Trump orchestrated a pro-Russian change to the Republican Party platform that watered down U.S. support for assistance to Ukraine. Once in office he threatened to hold up military aide to Ukrainian while it was under Russian siege and suggested withdrawing the United States from NATO if he won a second term, a move that would have destroyed the alliance and fulfilled one of Vladimir Putin’s highest priorities. Not only did the investigations into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia expose a multitude of contacts between the two, but determined that Russia’s goal was to help Trump win and Trump’s campaign knew and appreciated Russia’s efforts on its behalf. It’s also worth noting that at a time when Trump was fighting off an investigation into the source of funding for his Scottish golf courses it was widely reported that Eric Trump had previously admitted, ‘Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”
Exactly what Trump might owe Vladimir Putin or his corrupt oligarchs in exchange for his ascendance to the presidency or for supplying him with funding when no one else would is a matter for speculation.
But, some kind of Russia involved shenanigans is merely one of the possibilities. As Garrett Graff pointed out in Politico Magazine “As president, Trump has surely learned secrets worth literally trillions of dollars—information about U.S. espionage capabilities, intelligence assets on earth and in outer space and nuclear and war plans, as well as the quirks, perversions and predilections of leaders and politicians the world over. Normally, former presidents have remained tight-lipped about these secrets after leaving office, but that’s more about tradition, integrity and their own sense of duty than it is about the law.” The nation’s most sensitive secrets going to the highest bidder should send chills down every spine. But, given Trump’s disdain for tradition, total lack of integrity and contempt for the law the possibility he intended to monetize the nations secrets for his own benefit is very real.
Thievery thought of a former American president sharing highly sensitive national security secrets with an adversary was unimaginable before Trump. That a former president would trade on this country’s national security for his own enrichment was also beyond the pale until now. But, these days, neither is implausible. And that, in itself, is frightening.
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