Folders

Classified folders. EMPTY classified folders.

So where did the documents go?

That’s the big mystery du jour.

His character tends to drive to unsavory speculations. His lying, his grifting, his love for violence all portends ill intentions.

A couple of years ago – maybe almost a decade ago – there was a furor over Hillary Clinton’s email server being used for her State Department work. At the time, I didn’t follow it slavishly because I wasn’t following politics too closely. Instead, I just made sure I read the snippets to see if she did anything illegal. The bottom line is: I don’t know all of the details of what she was doing with her private personal email server.

The only thing I remember about all of that brouhaha is that 1) some other government officials, most prominently Colin Powell, supposedly had similar arrangements; and 2) she was not deemed to have done anything illegal by the FBI but was regarded as being extremely reckless in her handling of government materials. James Comey actually re-opened the investigation into her emails just “11 days before the election” and then closed it back down again, saying, the FBI did not find anything criminal. Some say James Comey threw the election to Trump when re-opening the case.

So, with that backdrop, I wondered if there were any differences between Hillary’s email server and the documents found at “the former guy’s” home. If she was regarded as having not done anything illegal, why would he be any different?

Some news commentators have come out to suggest that there are differences.

For starters, one article said that her devices were easily accessible. She readily provided them to the FBI for scrutiny whereas the investigators spent at least a year to retrieve 15 boxes, found out they didn’t get all of the boxes, and had to go through a subpoena route in May 2022 which still didn’t yield all of the documents. The June 2022 visit to the club netted a few more materials as well as an assertion from the attorneys that the FBI has all of the materials and that all of the boxes were just in a storage room. But after seeing on videotapes the attempts to move boxes out of storage and “hide” them elsewhere, the FBI was finally forced to use a search warrant in August 2022 to get the missing documents that “the former guy” was withholding.

For a more precise of the timeline, read here.

That attempt to conceal those boxes is probably going to be the damning element. If he had been forthcoming and returned all of those boxes without asserting executive privilege, he would probably been declared to have not done anything illegal but was very reckless in his handling of government documents, just like Clinton was. The result would have been the same as Clinton’s.

It’s that element of obstruction that might get to him.

Some commentators have said that the types of classification are more severe in “the former guy’s” case than in Clinton’s. Maybe it’s the nuclear or military information, the human intelligence or the electronic intelligence that is very sensitive and damaging. I don’t know and won’t dwell upon these elements at this time. At this time, I am not sure how big a role they will play in his investigation/indictment.

And finally, the intent. What was the intent on holding those classified documents? The FBI noted that in Clinton’s case, she tried to be very careful in the handling of the emails and “talked” around the sensitive materials. They just slapped her hands because she wasn’t going to do anything nefarious with the materials and there was a possibility that other high-level officials were also using personal emails for their government work. So, while the FBI weren’t very happy, they felt they didn’t have enough materials for indictments.

And this is probably where the empty folders come into play.

The empty folders (and the continuing obstruction) are very damning. Of course, they are going to have to investigate because those documents may be found in other folders or lying elsewhere. Or he just stashed empty folders into the boxes when moving – kind of dubious about that but still a possibility.

What happened to those documents?