Trump held on to the documents because he anticipated an opportunity to commit treason

[babylonsister]

Trump held on to the documents because he anticipated an opportunity to commit treason
Tuesday, June 20, 2023 at 1:21:58p EDT
By Dartagnan

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But all of this still begs the question of “why?” The answer to that question hasn’t been discussed much. The media have skated around that question, because the most likely answer makes some people in this country very uncomfortable. The most logical reason Trump went to such lengths to keep these classified documents—in the face of potentially dire criminal liability—is because he expected an opportunity to share the information they contained for his own personal gain. And the fact that this would very likely implicate outright treason on his part? He had to be expecting to commit that as well.

As astutely observed by Fintan O’Toole, writing for the New York Review of Books:

Secrets are a kind of currency. They can be hoarded, but if kept for too long they lose their value. Like all currencies, they must, sooner or later, be used in a transaction—sold to the highest bidder or bartered as a favor for which another favor will be returned. To see the full scale of Donald Trump’s betrayal of his country, it is necessary to start with this reality. He kept intelligence documents because, at some point, those secrets could be used in a transaction. What he was stockpiling were the materials of treason. He may not have known how and when he would cash in this currency, but there can be little doubt that he was determined to retain the ability to do just that.

O’Toole skewers the media for focusing on the seemingly haphazard, almost comedic nature of the way the documents were discovered to be stored: in bathrooms and storerooms, amidst a near constant stream of random visitors and guests at Mar-a-Lago, occasionally brandished with a knowing alacrity, seemingly to impress a sycophant or two. As O’Toole notes, this focus misses the essential point.

It defines the scandal as, in the words of Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman in The New York Times, “Mr. Trump’s indifference toward the country’s most sensitive secrets.” But this is not a tale of indifference. Trump cared a great deal about the value of the documents. He cared enough, per the indictment, to suggest that his attorney lie to the FBI and a grand jury about what papers he did or did not have. Even Trump does not engage in a criminal conspiracy purely for its own sake. The retention of those boxes mattered to him because he understood the market value of what they contained.

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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/20/2176395/-Trump-held-on-to-the-documents-because-he-anticipated-an-opportunity-to-commit-treason