Apologies. On my phone and don’t always see the whole thread.
Deleted it just under the 15 minute edit window!
FBI Search and Seizure at Trump's Mar-A-Lago Residence, August 8, 2022, Case Dismissed July 15, 2024
I know, they’re easy to miss. I don’t know a way to make people go back and read unread posts before posting, unfortunately. 
Did any of the reporting actually state this as fact or as it’s what the DOJ believes to be the case? There is definitely a (Trumpian) logic to it and that’s as good a reason for him to have kept it, but I haven’t seen any non-opinion piece mention it.
From what I’ve read (as of yesterday anyway), the reporters have said that this is still unclear to them.
Given that it’s MSNBC, and that you can get an “expert” or “analyst” to say absolutely anything you want, MSNBC does have one legal analyst who thinks – if the recording we’re talking about here is true – Espionage Act charges are highly likely – a bet I still wouldn’t be taking as of today:
Following a new report that former president Donald Trump was caught on tape talking about classified documents he had in his possession, legal experts are pretty confident this might be the nail in the coffin of the Justice Department’s investigation. According to MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissman, the existence of that tape makes charges under the Espionage Act all but certain.
Dumb question: If he illegally hung onto that doc to use it against Milley – and not to barter it to a foreign power – is it still espionage?
It could be. I’ll quote again and add my own emphasis:
18 U.S.C. § 793 prohibits the gathering, transmitting, or receipt of defense information with the intent or reason to believe the information will be used against the United States or to the benefit of a foreign nation. Violators are subject to a fine or up to 10 years imprisonment, or both, as are those who conspire to violate the statute. Persons who possess defense information that they have reason to know could be used to harm the national security, whether the access is authorized or unauthorized, and who disclose that information to any person not entitled to receive it, or who fail to surrender the information to an officer of the United States, are subject to the same penalty.
The specifics represented by the recording of that phone call (in with every single other detail) will matter a lot, as will how aggressively Jack Smith (and Merrick Garland, if it comes to that) wants to proceed in this matter.
TFG will have a difficult time – idiot though he is – claiming he had absolutely no reason to know (as distinct from actually knowing something) what was and wasn’t National Defense Information. That’s the italicized part of the bolded bit above.
But my IANAL reading of the Espionage Act leads me to believe that – at least technically – TFG may very well have violated it.
The whole “MINES!” thing, and – as a result of that mindset – ignoring a lawful Subpoena – could well prove to have been a very consequential set of decisions he made.
Editorial content - it’s what I believe. I should have noted it as such. I’m not sure WHAT the DOJ believes.
Thanks for the cite and the detail.
Sounds like, whatever Trump intended to do with the doc, the fact that he had it at all (where it could theoretically fall into the wrong hands) puts him in violation of the act.
Lock him up.
Worse than that; it sounds French.
To parrot an oft-abused joke:
It’s only espionage if it’s from the Espionage region of France; otherwise it’s just spying.
Don’t they now have, at long last, probable cause to search every piece of property he owns?
Tape was from 2021. What evidence is there that he has classified documents there now, in 2023?
They gotta be somewhere and they were there once. May as well have a look see.
I don’t think there’s really anyone who loves Trump in spite of who he is. If that were it, they’d just settle on some other, less-reprehensible Republican. I think that for all of his supporters, there’s at least something about his reprehensibleness that appeals to them.
Owning the libs. I’m convinced a significant portion of Trump’s supporters just want to see the world burn.
Well, NARA said in October that they still didn’t have custody of all the administration files it should have. I think they were more focused on the documents of administration officials and not Trump himself, but even after the big Mar-a-lago search, classified docs were still turning up in at least 2 subsequent searches of Trump property.
I mean, that isn’t evidence in itself, and I guess that isn’t enough for probable cause (I also haven’t heard of any update from NARA on the remaining missing files), but it certainly doesn’t pass the smell test.
I was flipping through channels tonight and I saw Hannity asking Trump (in a town hall thing) how he would respond to people who say he should tone it down, stop calling people names. And the audience loudly booed. He’s the whole reprehensible package. They love it.
[Note that this quote is from the MSNBC article @DavidNRockies linked to, not from @DavidNRockies himself.]
This is very sloppy writing that actually says the opposite of what was clearly intended: the newly disclosed tape may be a nail in the the coffin of TFG’s defense, but if it were the final nail in the coffin of the investigation, that would mean the investigation is dead. Let’s hope to Og that that’s not the case.
The joke I heard was
“If it’s not from the Espionage region of France, it’s just sparkling treason”.
Sparkling spying, please.