Trump’s Stolen Documents: Newly Unsealed Numbers
DOJ has unsealed more of the original August 5, 2022 search warrant to search Mar-a-Lago. Here are some interesting numbers:
- At one point there were 85 to 95 boxes of documents in the storage room
- Walt Nauta was called “Witness 5” in the affidavit, meaning in addition to the enumerated lawyers and persons there are at least four other people described in the affidavit; now he’s alleged co-conspirator 1
- DOJ’s math on how many boxes Walt Nauta had moved in and out of the storage room was pretty close, estimating he had moved 15 to 30 boxes back into storage — per the indictment, the number was 30
- On first request, DOJ only obtained two months worth of surveillance footage showing what was being moved in and out of the anteroom to the storage room
- Evan Corcoran’s search of boxes lasted 2.5 hours
- Trump may have waited three weeks after Jay Bratt’s request on June 8 to secure the storage room to put a padlock on the door
One other detail of interest is that DOJ started tracking what was in a banker’s box, and what had been moved into a plain cardboard box.
Doc, seriously, do you get any sleep, at all? I’m retired and I can’t keep up.
Kudos on all you do.
Indeed. And yesterday she participated in an On Point show examining the current state of US Govt surveillance ten years on from the Snowden leaks. It’s quite a good show and Marcy comes in at 27:15. She gives chapter and verse concerning the changes in eavesdropping laws and programs, as well as context with regard to our changing use of technologies that renders some of those programs almost moot.
https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510053/on-point
When I heard her being introduced by Chakravarti, that same thought came to my head: does this lady ever sleep?
I’m curious now about when DOJ got the photo showing the boxes in the storage room.
My guess is that one or more of Witnesses 1-4 had some photos on a phone that they showed the DOJ, which would have had the added value (for the purposes of obtaining the warrant) of being date/time stamped.
Bottom of page 17/top of page 18 of the June 8 indictment:
Was the damned photo still tacked to the boxes in Trump’s residence at the time the warrant was served last August???
I’m going to wet myself laughing so hard. Especially since the so-helpful Employee 2 took a photo from two different angles making counting the boxes so much easier.
No. But I think Employee 2, Molly Michael, gave it to them.
She was probably witness 4 at that point.
So Corcoran spent 150 minutes searching 85-95 boxes, which is on average about a minute and 45 seconds per box (if he never paused and no time was spent moving boxes around). Hmm.
30 boxes.
So 5 min per box. Still pretty cursory.
Two and a half hours to search perhaps 85-95 boxes. That’s a lawyer who doesn’t want to find anything.
And Trump waited three weeks to put a simple padlock on the storage room door – painfully inadequate, but a recognition/admission that more than minimal protection of government property was needed. Must have been busy doing something else and didn’t give a shit about national security.
Remember that exchange from page 19 of the June 8 indictment in which Nauta mentioned to someone else he’d written too much on the top of a box?
Want to bet Corcoran was looking at marks on boxes’ exteriors versus looking at the contents inside boxes? Because I could see it taking 2.5 hours to look at the outside of all the boxes located on the premises at MaL.
Definitely! Kinda like The Purloined Letter strategy of hiding evidence out in the open.
I also suspect that may be why they moved from Bankers boxes to plain boxes.
They couldn’t find lids so just got new boxes.
Or there’s something else to that. White bankers’ boxes are pretty common.
https://www.staples.com/Bankers-Box-Basic-Strength-Stor-File-Storage-Boxes-6-Pack/product_761342
https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/449813/Bankers-Box-StorFile-Standard-Duty-Storage/
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Bankers-Box-Stor-File-Medium-Duty-Letter-Legal-White-3-Pk/16349598
https://www.target.com/p/bankers-box-storage-file-letter-legal-12-34-x10-34-x15-34-8pk-white-fellowes/-/A-15201996
Heck, I can even get them at the hardware store:
https://www.acehardware.com/departments/storage-and-organization/totes-bins-and-baskets/household-storage-bins-boxes-drawers/9299900
What if the change in box type had been discussed and someone wanted the boxes to look less obviously like they contained documents?
Corrugated-washing. Interesting thought. Though at that point, isn’t it the case that pretty much everyone but the FBI would already have seen the banker boxes, and the FBI would have known they had left DC in banker boxes, and the plain boxes would look suspiciously new?
Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if the guy came back from the store and said we need another plan, you can’t buy just the tops.
At least some of the boxes in the bathroom were Staples’s basic-grade box. (I could see the label, and checked on line.)
Staples makes sense — looks like the closest big box office supplies store, closer than Office Depot. Box selection process still seems hinky to me, like we’re missing information.
Nothing but the best when Trump wants to protect US national security information, stored in a damp room on a waterfront property in South Florida. Imagine what Trump spends to protect his own paltry information.
I saw Marcy’s correction that it was about 30 boxes, not 85-90.
What lawyer would want to under bill Trump, even assuming he paid what you billed? But 2.5 hours is so low, it would fit with reviewing what was written on the outside of these boxes rather than their contents. But that”s not a search, it’s triage.
It’s also how a lawyer avoids seeing and touching classified information which might cause him even more heartburn, and some of it not billable.
Then perhaps the wrong lawyer was doing the search, and should have known that before taking the gig. Just thinking out loud.
Oh, it is billable.
Everything is billable. Spent an entire semester on that.
It really is. Getting paid for all that billing is a different proposition though.
Does that 2.5 hours include the breaks he took outside at the pool patio (per his notes)?
And if the video doesn’t show his coming and going for those breaks, does that indicate a route to the storage from outside that isn’t captured by video?
“Must have been busy doing something else and didn’t give a shit about national security.”
Yes, he was indeed busy with all the LIV shit swirling around him at that point in time, so I’m wondering how many Saudi “body men” were nosing around MAL and Bedminster, unmonitored and unnoticed, while Trump schmoozed with their bosses?
2.5 hours? That’s it?!
Yes, my thought on reading that was: I wonder how many agent-hours were logged in the FBI search that uncovered those extra 100 docs? I’m guessing it would approach 100, maybe more.
Thinking about the sheer volume of boxes and the impressive level of disorganization at both the box and document level (not to mention the security level), is it not likely that a “guest” wanting to help themselves would find it fairly easy to locate a few classified documents, but quite difficult, barring dumb luck, to find any that would be of immediate use to them? Obviously doesn’t change the picture as far as needing to consider any given document in those boxes potentially compromised.
Also one wonders if the presence (actual or presumed) of security cameras would have daunted anyone.
I don’t think I have ever seen the word “daunted” used without the prefix “un” before. And I have read a lot of English in the last 60 years. Congratulations on surprising me, Sue.
Any new reporting on MAL trespasser Yujing Zhang, who “prosecutors said items found in her hotel room included a signal detector used to pick up the presence of hidden cameras, nine USB drives, five sim cards and a cellphone, $8,000 in cash and several credit and debit cards”?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50553805
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/14/chinese-woman-trespass-trump-mar-a-lago-deported
[Moderator’s note: Say goodbye, Eric. You’ve sockpuppeted for the last time. We don’t have time to work with your constant tweaks to your username and email address. /~Rayne]