Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
We'll never know why Trump took those records. People like to assume nefarious goals, but it's just as likely incompetence, arrogance (they're mine), and paranoia (they're confidential to me and my team alone), or all four combined.
We've all dealt with people accused of civil fraud who seem to make a habit of it and often succeed in it. They seem to simply ignore rules. I'm not talking about willful ignorance. I'm talking about ignorance as policy - simply not observing rules unless they're thrust upon one.
It's impossible to pin fraud on these people because they honestly don't know wtf they're doing. They just don't care. They seem to follow a policy of "I'll do what I want unless and until stopped from doing so." Sure, they follow the big rules we all know one can't violate (outright, obvious crimes), but they never look at the fine print rules. So any accusation involving intent becomes nearly impossible to prove. (One always winds up settling for a negligent misrepresentation claim instead of fraud when suing them.)
I don't think Trump would know or give a fuck about document handling rules if his life depended on it. That shit's beneath him, work for the eggheads. Except he had no eggheads. He had sycophants. And this allows him a second level of defense - in addition to lack of intent, the argument somebody else was responsible. (He's going to use this one on Giuliani in GA soon, I think.)
He's so sheltered, so clueless, and so unaware of anything beyond the immediate that I believe him when he says he thought he could declassify the docs and walk off with them. In his ADD addled pea brain he probably figured, in Nixonian fashion, when the President says its declassified, it's declassified.
God only knows how many people he showed the allegedly sensitive stuff he held on heads of state. "Vinnie, look, I'm not paying you the $500 for losing that match because I quit on hole 17 to take a phone call. I'm POTUS... I can do that. But come in my office and check out these photos of Macron with the housekeeper. And you really gotta see these crazy nukes Kim Jong Un has been building."
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This tracks with my thinking, especially since I'm pretty sure (based off multiple reports from various vectors with interactions with him over decades) he's borderline illiterate. At the most generous, he's not exactly one who curls up with a good book. Or a dry report. He probably hasn't actually read the vast majority of what was in those boxes. And that makes it almost scarier, because he's either relying on other people or he's just keeping them for keeping them's sake. Probably both.
Rules don't apply to him, and they never have (see, reading speculation above, against academic credentials that suggest otherwise). At least to his way of thinking. His great gift is getting other people to his way of thinking. He absolutely knows what that particular rule is because he gleefully signed the law STRENGTHENING it as some sort of Gotcha over the Clinton emails. He just didn't think they apply to him.
I keep thinking back to my husband's missed car payment and Wanda Sykes' stereo. Trump's credit situation is not exactly known to be great. And the man is not known to be driven by his better angels when it comes to anything that either makes him a buck or gets him out of having to pay.
Even if no charges are brought forward and it is an "oops, sorry, in our rush to get out, we grabbed these too and forgot for six months to give it back even though you asked over and over again," getting that stuff back is absolutely critical.
