A court filing from Special Counsel Jack Smith in the case of former president Donald Trump’s theft of classified documents which he later stored in boxes at his Mar-a-Lago resort makes it clear that Smith has indeed found the underlying motive for why Trump thought he needed those documents in the first place.
Aaron Blake of the Washington Post took a close look at the filing and writes that one particular “nugget” caught his eye.
While arguing against the motion by Trump’s lawyers to delay the May 20 trial, special counsel Jack Smith’s lawyers assured they’re ready to go and that such a delay isn’t necessary, unsurprisingly. But they also said they are ready to prove something significant that, to this point, has remained shrouded and the subject of much speculation: why Trump allegedly took and kept the documents.
In the filing, Smith and his team of prosecutors write, “That the classified materials at issue in this case were taken from the White House and retained at Mar-a-Lago is not in dispute.”
The filing continues:
“What is in dispute is how that occurred, why it occurred, what Trump knew, and what Trump intended in retaining them — all issues that the Government will prove at trial primarily with unclassified evidence.”
Keep in mind that proving intent isn’t necessary for Trump to be found guilty. After all, the evidence shows he had the documents in his possession and knew he wasn’t allowed to have them, despite his public protestations that he had every right to take any document under his powers as president. But of course those powers went away the second he left office, as Blake notes.
You have documents, you fail to return them when the government comes calling and that’s a crime regardless of why you did it, the argument goes. Trump’s indictment in the case made no direct claims about a potential motive.
Proving a motive, however, might be incredibly helpful to convince a jury that Trump had bad intentions and wasn’t just a pack rat.
Indeed, establishing a motive would seem to drive home the intention of Trump’s actions and combat any arguments that this was all a misunderstanding — or that Trump somehow didn’t know what he had (which the government has taken care to undermine).
What might that motive be? Well, it involves Iran, which is suddenly very much in the headlines after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.
Perhaps the most significant document in the indictment deals with a plan for attacking Iran, which Trump allegedly showed to a writer and a publisher. A recording of the scene has been made public.
The document and recording are significant because they show Trump acknowledging, in real time, that the document is classified and that he never declassified it — contrary to his public suggestions about the documents. (Trump had also initially said the document didn’t exist and that his talk was mere bravado — before Smith’s team added the actual alleged document to a superseding indictment.)
More specifically, Trump may have wanted to use the documents as a way to attack his critics, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who has been highly critical of the disgraced ex-president.
Whether other evidence points in this direction, we don’t yet know. But Smith’s team has clearly shown an interest in whether Trump used the documents for his personal advantage. In April it subpoenaed information about the dealings of Trump’s businesses with foreign countries, for instance, apparently in search of a possible financial motive.
Revenge and profit. Those certainly sound like perfect motives for a man as hateful and greedy as Donald Trump. In time, it appears we’ll know for sure.