"The Photo"
We Need to Know Trump’s Motive For Taking
Classified Documents (Beastie Boys (and Girls))
[Yes].
It’s well past time for the Justice Department to stop coddling the rogue ex-president and get to the bottom of his assault on U.S. national security. [Yes]
...we all will remain at risk until we know not just what he did—but why he did it.
Stealing documents like these is not an accident, not an oversight...
The risk involved in taking these documents and then lying about having them is extraordinarily high. Therefore, the decision to do so must have been carefully made, even by a reckless narcissist like Trump. As such, there must have been a careful calculus made to take and hold these ultra-sensitive secrets.
Yes. I had not completely thought that point through. He clearly did not accidentally take 100 top classified documents. He was told repeatedly that all 11,000 pages were government property. His response was, "They're mine." He did it purposively. This is not pack rat behavior, it is cherry-picking: "Nah, not that one; Ooh, yeah, that one."
It is essential that we find out why he took them, why he lied about having them, why he did not return them when subpoenaed, who may have seen them, whether copies were made, whether there are other such documents in his possession, and much much more.
...
There are no close calls here...
True. This is not a close call.
We have, in the past, assumed the latest Trumpian outrage would be a turning point and, ultimately, lead to him being held to account for the damage he has done. If this particular case—egregious as it is and with so much clear evidence to support ongoing, grave wrongdoing on Trump’s part—does not prove to be that moment, we should not only lament the failure of our justice system, we should begin to prepare for the potentially severe consequences of his treachery.
Okay, I agree with all I have excerpted, including that summation Beasties are absolutely correct but there's a big fly stuck in the
ointment. The government almost never has to prove motive and it does
not have to here. True as gold as that is, as I have written repeatedly,
it is sometimes fatal to a prosecution not to have some, arguable,
plausible motive. But sometimes not. It has always seemed to me that the
need for motive was more acute in crimes of violence and of passion
where the mental state of the perpetrator is an element that must be
proved beyond a reasonable doubt, as opposed to a "paper case" as here,
or a child porn case where all the government has to prove (and they can
prove it as any other element circumstantially) is knowing possession
of contraband. But, repeating, sometimes not. I don't know why Jeffrey
MacDonald slaughtered his family, neither did the prosecutors in that
Fatal Vision case, the lack of motive was nearly a fatal distraction to
the prosecutors, but not to the jury who convicted. But we, juries, here
the American public will obsess over motive. When I was a prosecutor (not
when I was a defense attorney) I wholeheartedly believed that if we had
God's view of a case, a video of the crime and a recording of what was
going on in the perpetrator's head that it would always be worse than we
thought. Here, in 45th's
case, I cannot imagine a case that cries out (it does not "demand"
because the prosecution does not have to prove) more for an answer to
"Why?" than this one does. The question is obsessed by Ross Douthat, by
the Beasties, by, I dare say, all of us. If we had Douthat's smoking
gun, sale to the Saudis, that would be worse than I have, until the
recent disclosures, thought remotely plausible. My (second) ex-wife
however has thought that that's exactly what 45th
did (sold them to Russia). With the revelation of the 48 empty Top
Secret folders recovered however, I am not sure. What was in them and
why are they empty? Why? is here answerable by God only in colors on the dark side of the spectrum. Among the shades of darkness that this plausibly could be the spectrum has narrowed from dark gray to vantablack.