Classified Document: The Jack Smith Report We Cannot See

Merrick Garland vouchsafed to release the first Special Counsel report. Great. But it's the second one that the public needs to read.

A full week after Jack Smith, the Special Counsel tasked with investigating the numerous crimes committed by Donald Trump, submitted two reports to his boss, the hapless Merrick Garland has vouchsafed to release the first of the two volumes to the American public.

The full report, which I have not yet had time to read, concerns what the press euphemistically calls “election interference,” and details all the myriad ways Trump broke the letter and spirit of the law to remain in power—how he, as the Washington Post neatly summarized, using the unnecessary qualifier “allegedly,”

pressed officials in key swing states to ignore the popular vote and flip electoral votes from Joe Biden to Trump; tried to submit fraudulent slates of electors from such states; threatened Justice Department leaders to open sham investigations and falsely claim election fraud to get states to join the plan; and pressured Vice President Mike Pence to use his ceremonial role overseeing Congress’s election certification on Jan. 6, 2021, to overturn the results.

None of this is new. We heard all about it from the House January 6th Committee. The contents are so “old news” that the initial coverage highlights not the Trump felonies but Smith’s proclamation that, had the case gone to trial, Donald would have been convicted (yet again): “Indeed, but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the Presidency, the Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”

I’ve no doubt that the Special Counsel is right. But instead of again putting Trump on trial, we’re again putting him in the White House. How did this happen? Why did the case not proceed? Why was Jack Smith given this assignment in the first place?

Because a Nixon-era Justice Department memo opined that a sitting president—or, I suppose, a private citizen who used to be the president—is magically immune from indictment. And Merrick Garland, the dithering coward, the tone-deaf twerp, the spineless castrato in robes who weeps whenever he speaks in public about pursuing the bad guys without fear or favor, possessed neither the courage nor the conviction to revisit an internal department guideline written when I was in diapers, because he didn’t want to upset the DOJ apple cart. Garland seems to believe that countermanding the opinion in that dusty memo is tantamount to destroying the entire institution over which he presides. He doesn’t bother to ask whether a Justice Department that can’t even bring a case against a fucking insurrectionist rapist mobster, let alone win a conviction, deserves to survive.

To fully express the level of my anger against this utterly useless person, this human embodiment of dull and flaccid mediocrity, this flesh-and-blood symbol of the death of our democracy, I shall have to paraphrase Tupac Shakur:

Fuck Merrick Garland as a staff, record label, and as a motherfucking crew,
And if you wanna get down with Merrick Garland, then fuck you too.

For what it’s worth, Smith agrees with me. “The Department’s view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a President is categorical,” he writes, and you can practically feel him gritting his teeth and see his eyeballs rolling backward into his skull, “and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution,” before adding, with what must be sarcasm, “which the Office stands fully behind.”

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Meanwhile, the second Jack Smith report—you remember: the one about the stolen documents case—remains under wraps. Unlike with the “election interference” case, there was no House special committee investigating the theft of the top secret documents. We don’t really know any more than what Smith wrote in the indictment, back in July of 2023. But what he wrote is, or should be, enough.

The “election interference” case is big and sprawling and complicated. One could imagine some MAGA juror getting hung up on some of the details. The documents case, by contrast, is completely straightforward: open-and-shut. Trump knowingly, intentionally took something that didn’t belong to him, and once these things were established as missing, FBI agents subsequently found them on his property, many miles away. It’s like if Donald rented an Airbnb, and when he left, he had his manservant toss the TV and PlayStation and Keurig machine into his car and drove off with it, and then detectives found the TV and PlayStation and Keurig machine in his penthouse apartment—only instead of a TV and PlayStation and Keurig machine, what he made off with were top secret documents related to our nuclear capabilities. (Trump also lied about what he did, including to his own attorneys, magnifying the criminality, but ultimately, this is a simple case of his tiny hands getting caught in the cookie jar.)

But Merrick Garland has no plans to release the second report. First, because the presiding judge, Aileen Cannon, who has already revealed herself as nakedly corrupt, told him not to. And the nation’s top cop must answer to a flamenco dancer married to a mobster, who was recruited by Marco Rubio and installed by Trump just to muck up the works! If he doesn’t, there will be anarchy!

But the AG is also withholding the second report because—and this was the stated reason—the cases against Trump’s two co-defendants, Waltine Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira, remain active. This is what is causing my blood to boil this morning. It’s like he’s saying we can’t learn more about the pistol that shot everyone because we’re busy prosecuting the holster.

Like, this is fucking insane. Releasing the report is orders of magnitude more important than convicting these two losers. Nauta is Trump’s “body man,” the manservant who presumably changes his diapers. De Oliveira is the guy who manages the Mar-a-Lago property—Trump’s butler. These two are only under indictment because they did what their boss told them to do. They are not Roger Stone or Mike Flynn or Paul Manafort. They are not dangerous. They are not a further threat to the country’s security. If Nauta goes free, we think he’s going to, what, break into my house and move some boxes around?

Also, does Garland not understand that Trump will immediately pardon his two loyal underlings? Four years at the DOJ and Unwary Merry still hasn’t figured out who and what Donald is!

This ain’t complicated: Drop the charges and drop the second report!

Since Garland is going to go out the same way he came in, with the wimpiest of whimpers, I wanted to revisit the indictment against Trump, his manservant, and his butler—just to remind myself how drunk is the driver we’re giving the nation’s car keys to.

Here goes:

Over the course of his presidency, TRUMP gathered newspapers, press clippings, letters, notes, cards, photographs, official documents, and other materials in cardboard boxes that he kept in the White House. Among the materials TRUMP stored in his boxes were hundreds of classified documents.

The classified documents TRUMP stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack. The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.

To fully appreciate the gravity of the threat here, read that second paragraph out loud. Oh, and I would delete the word “could” before “put at risk.” Trump absolutely put our national security at risk—and continues to do so.

At 12:00 p.m. on January 20, 2021, TRUMP ceased to be president. As he departed the White House, TRUMP caused scores of boxes, many of which contained classified documents, to be transported to The Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, where he maintained his residence. TRUMP was not authorized to possess or retain those classified documents.

Again, Donald swiped the TV and the PlayStation and the Keurig machine from the Airbnb and brought them to his house.

The Mar-a-Lago Club was an active social club, which, between January 2021 and August 2022, hosted events for tens of thousands of members and guests. After TRUMP’s presidency, The Mar-a-Lago Club was not an authorized location for the storage, possession, review, display, or discussion of classified documents. Nevertheless, TRUMP stored his boxes containing classified documents in various locations at The Mar-a-Lago Club—including in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room.

Mar-a-Lago is an event space, a place where they have weddings and proms and bar mitzvahs. Many thousands of people passed through its tacky doors these last four years. The security was a joke. Remember how that one woman said she was a Rothschild and wasn’t a Rothschild but they thought she was a Rothschild and let her in anyway? And that’s just one instance of infiltration that we happen to know about.

Ever the braggart, Trump enjoyed showing off his purloined classified materials to randos:

In July 2021, at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey…during an audio-recorded meeting with a writer, a publisher, and two members of his staff, none of whom possessed a security clearance, TRUMP showed and described a “plan of attack” that TRUMP said was prepared for him by the Department of Defense and a senior military official. TRUMP told the individuals that the plan was “highly confidential .. and secret.” TRUMP also said, “as president I could have declassified it,” and, “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”

So the idea that FPOTUS was unaware of what he was doing is balderdash. Donald knew. He always knows.

After getting wind of the missing materials, the FBI opened a formal investigation, which Trump obstructed at every turn—almost like he didn’t want anyone to find out the extraordinary nature of the documents he’d filched:

The grand jury issued a subpoena requiring TRUMP to turn over all documents with classification markings. TRUMP endeavored to obstruct the FBI and grand jury investigations and conceal his continued retention of classified documents by, among other things:

a. suggesting that his attorney falsely represent to the FBI and grand jury that TRUMP did not have documents called for by the grand jury subpoena;

b. directing defendant WALTINE NAUTA to move boxes of documents to conceal them from TRUMP’s attorney, the FBI, and the grand jury;

c. suggesting that his attorney hide or destroy documents called for by the grand jury subpoena;

d. providing to the FBI and grand jury just some of the documents called for by the grand jury subpoena, while claiming that he was cooperating fully;

e. causing a certification to be submitted to the FBI and grand jury falsely representing that all documents called for by the grand jury subpoena had been produced—while knowing that, in fact, not all such documents had been produced; and

f. attempting to delete security camera footage at The Mar-a-Lago Club to conceal information from the FBI and grand jury.

And these were important documents, life-and-death documents, the kind of thing that the plots of spy movies revolve around:

After his presidency, TRUMP retained classified documents originated by, or implicating the equities of, multiple USIC members and other executive branch departments and agencies, including the following:

a. The Central Intelligence Agency (“CIA”). CIA was responsible for providing intelligence on foreign countries and global issues to the president and other policymakers to help them make national security decisions.

b. The Department of Defense (“DoD”). DoD was responsible for providing the military forces needed to deter war and ensure national security. Some of the executive branch agencies comprising the USIC were within DoD.

c. The National Security Agency. The National Security Agency was a combat support agency within DoD and a member of the USIC responsible for foreign signals intelligence and cybersecurity. This included collecting, processing, and disseminating to United States policymakers and military leaders foreign intelligence derived from communications and information systems; protecting national security systems; and enabling computer network operations.

d. The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency was a combat support agency within DoD responsible for the exploitation and analysis of imagery, imagery intelligence, and geospatial information in support of the national security objectives of the United States and the geospatial intelligence requirements of DoD, the Department of State, and other federal agencies.

e. The National Reconnaissance Office. The National Reconnaissance Office was an agency within DoD responsible for developing, acquiring, launching, and operating space-based surveillance and reconnaissance systems that collected and delivered intelligence to enhance national security.

f. The Department of Energy. The Department of Energy was responsible for maintaining a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent to protect national security, including ensuring the effectiveness of the United States nuclear weapons stockpile without nuclear explosive testing.

g. The Department of State and Bureau of Intelligence and Research. The Department of State was responsible for protecting and promoting United States security, prosperity, and democratic values. Within the Department of State, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research was a member of the USIC and responsible for providing intelligence to inform diplomacy and support United States diplomats.

If you skimmed past all of that, go back and read the part about the Department of Energy being in charge of our nuclear program. TRUMP STOLE DOCUMENTS RELATING TO OUR NUCLEAR CAPABILITIES FFS!!! Why did he do that? Who did he give them to? Did he sell them? Why did he lie about it?

If Smith covers any of that in his report, we don’t get to know.

In all, there were 32 documents so verboten that their possession violated Title 18, United States Code, Section 793(e). That’s the section that deals with espionage. It is impossible to overstate how much of a risk this is to our national security. It is impossible to overstate the threat Trump’s return to the White House poses to the American people.

But you’re going to have to take my word for it, and the words of Jack Smith in the bombshell of an 18-month-old indictment that will now, like everything else about Trump’s crimes, be permanently memory-holed. Merrick Garland has an institution to protect, don’t you know. Fear and favor and all that.

Unless the AG changes his mind over the next six days—because I think we can safely say Pam Bondi will sit on it—we’re not going to see the second Jack Smith report. And that’s the more important of the two. Trump’s “election interference” is nothing less than seditious conspiracy, about as serious a charge as there is—but those crimes are unlikely to recur in his second term. Meanwhile, he’s going to begin mishandling top secret documents as soon as he gets his tiny fingers on them six days from now.

Only, in six days, Trump’s possession and dissemination of top secret documents will be very legal and very cool. Which doesn’t make this any less dangerous.

One thing we can say for sure: The espionage will continue.

When you’re the President, you see, they just let you do it.

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Photo credit: FBI.