The Patriot Post® · Not Much Ado in Trump Classified Docs Case?

It’s hard to know whether there’s any there there, but it doesn’t do anything to convince fair-minded Americans that the Biden administration has been an innocent bystander in the prosecutorial targeting of Donald Trump.

We’re referring to new revelations that the federal government’s General Services Administration worked with Trump’s transition team to ship two pallets of boxed documents accumulated during Trump’s term in office to his Mar-a-Lago home a year before Special Persecutor Jack Smith raided the residence in his search for classified documents with which to indict Trump.

Show us the man and you’ll show us the crime, right Jack?

“So an entire pallet full of boxes that had been held by GSA somewhere outside of DC is dumped at Mar-a-Lago. Apparently these are the boxes that ended up containing papers with ‘classified markings.’” So said the intrepid Julie Kelly, who ever since January 6, 2021, has boldly gone where no other journalist has dared. “WELL WELL WELL,” she added with more than a hint of snark, “I am pretty sure we never heard this part of the ‘classified documents/box’ story! … I am sure NOTHING hanky happened there.”

Kelly has since laid out what we now know about the documents in a RealClearInvestigations piece. She writes, “Top Biden administration officials worked with the National Archives to develop Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against Donald Trump involving the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified material, according to recently unsealed court documents in the case pending in southern Florida.”

The heretofore hidden revelation came earlier this week in Florida, where, as PJ Media’s Matt Margolis reports, “Judge Aileen Cannon unsealed a trove of new documents that Jack Smith fought to keep hidden.”

Perhaps we’re being unfair to Smith. After all, it’s not like he has a history of deeply troubling and unscrupulous prosecutorial behavior. Oh, wait. Apparently, the unsealed items included lots of exhibits, motions, and other filings that show the communication collusion between Joe Biden’s White House and the National Archives prior to the raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and his subsequent indictment.

“I understand that we are ready to ship,” reads an email sent on August 26, 2021, by Kathy Geisler, the director of the Office of Portfolio Management and Real Estate’s Program Execution Division. One of the recipients of that email was Beau Harrison, a Trump aide. “I know that originally we had 3 pallets going to the storage unit — that is now 4 pallets going to the storage unit. 2 Pallets will go to Mar-a-Lago.”

What’s unclear is how long these pallets were in storage in the Virginia facility or how secure they were. Were the documents tightly guarded, or might just anyone have had access to them?

The Federalist asked the National Archives and Records Administration the obvious question: whether these particular pallets included the documents that were later confiscated by Smith and his team of Mar-a-Lago raiders. The agency said it had “no awareness about the contents of the materials on the pallets and had no involvement in the move project that is referenced in the GSA emails.”

But, as Kelly added, NARA “was harassing Trump throughout 2021 for what they insisted were government records apparently WITHOUT contacting GSA to search dozens of boxes in their possession.”

Of course, this revelation doesn’t deal a mortal blow to the prosecution’s case — at least not yet. Nor is this to say that Team Brandon planted evidence at Mar-a-Lago. But would any sentient being be slack-jawed and gobsmacked to learn that they did? In any case, we suspect that at least one potential Florida juror will have taken note of it.

The Washington Post’s Philip Bump dutifully came to Joe Biden’s defense, attacking Julie Kelly and telling everyone to movealongnothingtoseehere: “There’s no smoking gun related to the material shipped from Trump’s Crystal City office to Mar-a-Lago. It’s just another unverified rumor that coursed through the right-wing narrative universe before reality could catch up.”

Kelly never claimed these new revelations were “a smoking gun.” All she did was help raise awareness of the heretofore unreported shipment of a massive trove of documents from a Biden-controlled government agency to Donald Trump’s private residence.

Bump whines about an “unverified rumor,” but he acts as if there’s no precedent for illegal behavior on behalf of the government in order to target Donald Trump. Perhaps Bump never read the devastating Durham Report. And perhaps he’s just blissfully ignorant about the mainstream media’s role in spreading fake news on behalf of the Obama and Biden administrations.

As we’ve noted before, of the 91 felony charges heaped upon Trump, the documents charges are the most perilous legal threat he faces. Which is precisely why the chain of custody, and all the other elements of this case, deserve our scrutiny.

Thoughtful and fair-minded Americans have every right to be suspicious of the government when we learn about its lack of transparency. When it comes to Donald Trump, they haven’t exactly earned the benefit of the doubt.

In any case, the goings-on in the Trump classified documents case — and, indeed, all the lesser “ham sandwich” offenses he’s being charged with elsewhere — continue to highlight the two-tiered difference between how Joe Biden has been treated and how Trump is being treated.

And they might lend themselves to a campaign bumper sticker: Trump 2024: At least he’s competent to stand trial.