In the days since the bombshell FBI search warrant raid at ex-President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound, we have finally determined — through the release of the search warrant documents as well as details that have been released by Trump personally through his endless whining on social media — that the driving force behind the warrant was the countless boxes of top-secret, classified, and federally protected documents and materials that should have been delivered to the National Archives upon the end of Donald’s presidency, but were instead taken with the corrupt former president to his Palm Beach country club home.
Despite the release of the search warrant and the trickle of less than trustworthy details coming from the former president as he slowly loses his mind, we have yet to understand the full scope of what exactly it was that Donald Trump illegally took from the White House when he was officially kicked out in 2021. Though, we have had credible reporting that revealed at least some of it had to do with nuclear weapons.
However, while we still don’t know the specifics of the “what” exactly it was that Donald Trump took from the White House, Bloomberg contributor and Trump biographer Timothy L. O’Brien has now offered up his educated theory as far as “why” Trump took the materials to begin with — and it’s even more disturbing than you think.
O’Brien outlines three possible (and highly plausible) reasons Donald Trump wanted to keep the classified, top-secret, and federally protected documents for himself (despite almost assuredly knowing how much trouble it could land him in) after his time in the White House was officially over.
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The Trump biographer’s first theory comes down to nothing more than Trump’s resounding immaturity, resulting in the ex-president clinging to the last remnants of the exclusivity and privilege that the US presidency once offered him. In essence, it makes him feel cool and important.
But O’Brien explains that the possible driving force behind Donald Trump’s decision to essentially steal top-secret, federally protected documents and materials only gets far more “deeply damaging and troubling” from there.
Unfettered greed has motivated Trump his entire life. He didn’t get into the casino business to beautify Atlantic City,” O’Brien writes. “He didn’t propose a mega-development on Manhattan’s West Side because it would have made New York more livable. He didn’t start Trump University to educate students, and he didn’t host ‘The Apprentice’ to tutor entrepreneurs. He didn’t originally run for president to revitalize democracy. Money, money, money.”
The former Trump biographer goes on to theorize that the former president may have been desperately trying to salvage what little was left of his brutally damaged reputation.
“…what other communications are contained in the documents Trump kept? Anything with Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping?” O’Brien wondered. “How about documents pertaining to Trump’s phone calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from that time when Trump was trying to strong-arm Zelenskiy into digging up dirt on his political opponent, Joe Biden? Those communications led to the first of Trump’s two impeachment proceedings.”
The search warrant documents were made public this week by Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Justice Department and the Florida judge who officially unsealed them, showing that the former US president was under investigation for possible violations of the US Espionage Act, after the Federal Bureau of Investigation recovered multiple documents, records, and materials that were clearly marked “Top Secret” from former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last week.
The unsealed seven-page federal court filing reportedly showed that several of the papers recovered by the FBI were clearly marked as “Top Secret” and were “meant to be only available in special government facilities.”
Read Timothy O’Brien’s full analysis with Bloomberg here.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
