As far as we know, investigations into former President Donald Trump’s possession of classified documents and his actions on and leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, exist as two separate probes.
But it’s hard to believe things will stay that way.
In my view, it seems Trump’s possession of classified documents is part and parcel to his attempt to remain president — or at least play the part — despite losing the 2020 election. And with each passing day, a new report adds to my suspicion that Trump tried to establish a shadow presidency in 2021. It would appear the events of Jan. 6 were part of that effort, as was Trump’s insistence on keeping classified material at Mar-a-Lago, his “Winter White House.”
Let’s start with what we know.
According to a Washington Post report published Tuesday, Trump repeatedly resisted Justice Department efforts to retrieve classified documents he took to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
The Post reported:
In a legal filing on Monday, Trump’s lawyers insisted that he had been cooperating with Justice Department requests. In fact, however, the narrative they laid out, as well as other documents and interviews, show that Trump ignored multiple opportunities to quietly resolve the FBI concerns by handing over all classified material in his possession — including a grand jury subpoena that Trump’s team accepted May 11. Again and again, he reacted with a familiar mix of obstinance and outrage, causing some in his orbit to fear he was essentially daring the FBI to come after him.
On Tuesday, the National Archives released a letter acting U.S. archivist Debra Steidel Wall sent to Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran in May. In the letter, Wall dismissed Team Trump’s absurd claim that documents he kept were protected by executive privilege — that is, the privilege that rightly belongs to the current president, Joe Biden. Trump seemed to try his best to retain his presidential powers after he’d been stripped of them by voters.
The Justice Department asked Biden to authorize the National Archives to provide seized documents to investigators despite Trump’s claims of executive privilege, according to the letter. In response, Biden deferred to Wall’s decision on whether Trump’s claim of executive privilege was valid, Wall wrote in her letter. She determined it was not.
“I have therefore decided not to honor the former President’s ‘protective’ claim of privilege,” Wall wrote.
The letter was first published Monday by John Solomon, a conservative journalist and one of Trump’s representatives to the archives.
It’s a lesson Trump has been taught repeatedly. You may remember Trump deployed a similar executive privilege claim over documents related to the Jan. 6 attack, which led a federal judge in November to remind his legal team that “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.”
“He [Trump] retains the right to assert that his records are privileged, but the incumbent President ‘is not constitutionally obliged to honor’ that assertion,” Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in her opinion.
The fact Trump is still claiming executive privilege over documents proves he didn’t get the message. And we have every reason to think this was related to the matter at the heart of the Jan. 6 investigation: Trump’s effort to cling to presidential power past his term.
Remember: Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., publicly claimed Trump urged him to help “rescind” the 2020 election and put him back in the White House as recently as September of 2021.
Everything we know about Trump suggests his commandeering of highly sensitive material and his effort to stay in office despite being voted out of office are part of efforts to sabotage the peaceful transition of power. I think — and hope — it’s only a matter of time until the Jan. 6 and Mar-a-Lago investigations cross streams publicly.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.