Maybe the ex-president made a big boo-boo

Multiple sources are reporting that mistakes were made, as people responsible for mistakes like to say. The ex-president hoped to slow down the kerfuffle over documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago by asking the court of a special master to do special master things. Looks like the usually successful delay tactics the ex-president has relied on for decades backfired in this case. The New York Times writes:

Former President Donald J. Trump may have thought that he was playing offense when he asked a federal judge last week for an independent review of documents seized from his residence in Florida — a move that, at best, could delay but not derail an investigation into his handling of the records.

But on Tuesday night, the Justice Department used a routine court filing in the matter to initiate a blistering counteroffensive that disclosed new evidence that Mr. Trump and his legal team may have interfered with the inquiry.

In the filing, in Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida, department officials revealed more details about the classified materials that Mr. Trump had taken from the White House, including a remarkable photograph of several of them arrayed on the floor of Mar-a-Lago, his home and private club in Florida. In what read at times like a road map for a potential prosecution down the road, the filing also laid out evidence that Mr. Trump and his lawyers may have obstructed justice.

It was as if Mr. Trump, seeming not to fully grasp the potential hazards of his modest legal move, cracked open a door, allowing the Justice Department to push past him and seize the initiative.

“The Trump team got more than they bargained for,” said Preet Bharara, a former U.S. attorney in Manhattan and a longtime critic of Mr. Trump. “In response to a thin and tardy special master motion, D.O.J. was given the opportunity to be expansive.”

Covering its final page was what Mr. Bharara called “an extra proverbial thousand words”: an image of five yellow folders marked “Top Secret,” and a red one labeled “Secret,” lying on the ground beside a box of magazine covers.

The image, which seemed to be a standard evidence photo, was the sort of thing the government collects all the time for use at possible trials. But because Mr. Trump and his lawyers made disputed statements about their handling of the records, it gave the Justice Department an opportunity to publicize the photo, which has now appeared repeatedly on TV news.

 

On Wednesday, going back on the offensive, Mr. Trump attacked the image.

“Terrible the way the FBI, during the Raid on Mar-a-Lago, threw documents haphazardly all over the floor,” he wrote on his social media platform. He went to say, in a just-asking sort of way: “(Perhaps pretending it was me that did it!)”

John P. Fishwick Jr., an Obama appointee who served as the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia and had been critical of the department’s previous, less expansive filings, said that the Justice Department had started to shift its tactics.

“They are starting to understand that you not only need to be speaking to the judge with these filings, you need to be speaking directly to the American people,” he said.

Over the past week, what was initially meant to be a tightly argued legal brief focused on objecting to the appointment of a special master expanded into something much broader, the officials said. The filing became a more pointed presentation of evidence of the Justice Department’s belief that it had no choice except to seek a warrant for the search at Mar-a-Lago.

Who knows? Maybe this time the ex-president's delay and obstruct tactics landed him into trouble he cannot squirm out of as usual. Maybe. One can hope, but not be sure.