CNBC is reporting that Judge Canon has set the documents trial for August 14. Yes, of this year. “In the order Tuesday, Judge Aileen Cannon told Department of Justice prosecutors and lawyers for Trump to file all pretrial motions by July 24. Cannon also ordered that all hearings in the case, including the trial, will be held in U.S. District Court in Fort Pierce, Florida..”
Other people quoted in the article are doubtful it will really begin that soon, as there are a lot of legal kinks to work out and expectations that motions will be filed.. But I’m hoping that this indicates Canon was chastised enough the last time she was involved in Trump’s documents that she’s not going to pull any tricks on his behalf this time. We’ll see.
Trump’s newest excuse for why he didn’t return the documents was that the boxes contained a lot of other stuff, like his clothes. This is from an interview with Bret Baier on Fox News last night.
“Why not just hand them over then?” he asked.
Trump responded: “I wanted to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out of them. I don’t want to hand that over to [the National Archives and Records Administration] yet. And I was very busy, as you’ve sort of seen.”
The former president said there were “many things” beyond classified documents including “golf shorts, clothing, pants, shoes.” When Baier asked if the boxes contained defense documents, Trump said, “Not that I know of.”
Oh, yeah, the government absolutely will give you unlimited amounts of time to sort through your stuff and to find the national security documents they’ve been after you about for more than a year and a half. Not a problem.
Rolling Stone reported it this way:
“Like every other president I take things out,” Trump said. “In my case, I took it out pretty much in a hurry. People packed it up and left. I had clothing in there, I had all sorts of personal items in there. Much, much stuff.” After a brief digression to call his former attorney general Bill Barr a “coward,” Trump reiterated, “I have got a lot of things in there. I will go through those boxes. I have to go through those boxes. I take out personal things.” Finally, he clarified what those items were: “These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things: golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes, there were many things,” he said.
He knows the word “interspersed.” I’m surprised. See also Matt Naham at Law & Crime, ‘I don’t want to hand that over to NARA yet’: Trump went on Fox News and essentially confessed to violating the Espionage Act.
He also denied that the secret government document about Iran he was caught talking about on tape was actually a document. Or secret.
According to the transcript, Mr. Trump describes the document, which he claims shows General Milley’s desire to attack Iran, as “secret” and “like, highly confidential.” He also declares that “as president, I could have declassified it,” adding, “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
But in the interview on Monday, with the Fox News anchor Bret Baier, Mr. Trump denied that he had been referring to an actual document and claimed to have simply been referring to news clippings and magazine pieces.
“There was no document,” Mr. Trump insisted. “That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things. And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document. I didn’t have a document per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”
He actually was waving around a pair of his old golf shoes when he was caught on tape. There are lots of things in those boxes. And as they say, were you lying then, or are you lying now? Or both?
If this guy isn’t convicted, the U.S. should just admit it’s a failed state.