Dem
51
GOP
49
Thanks to a 2023 decision from U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell that was unsealed yesterday, we now know that 4 months after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago for classified documents, an additional four documents marked "classified" were found in Trump's personal bedroom. The decision also contained a note that a Trump employee scanned a bunch of classified documents and stored them on a laptop that belonged to Save America PAC.
Will this affect Trump's case? We suppose that depends on whether or not it ever gets to trial. But it certainly adds to the weight of the evidence that this was no accident, and that Trump knew exactly what he was doing. In fact, it pretty clearly suggests there was some sort of criminal intent, since what innocuous purpose could there possibly be in sharing the documents with a political action committee?
What this story definitely tells us is that the government really has no idea exactly what documents Trump took, and no idea whether he's still got originals, or copies, or if other people/entities have copies. It is entirely plausible that, say, Vladimir Putin could have classified materials that went from the Trump White House to Mar-a-Lago to someone like Sebastian Gorka to the Kremlin, and the government would be none the wiser. This is why Trump's behavior is such a problem, though again, we'll see if he ever pays a price for it. (Z)