Andrew Malekoff
The shoplifting surge in New York City’s chain pharmacies, captured on security videos and broadcast on network news, is shocking; but, no less so than Donald Trump looting top-secret documents from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
As scores of thieves ran amok and filled plastic garbage bags with mouthwash, antacid and hair gel, the former president loaded classified files containing information about top-secret U.S. operations into boxes, along with love letters from Kim Jong Un.
“You go to a local pharmacy, Duane Reade or Rite Aid, any of them, and you gotta get someone to help assist you,” civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton lamented. “What did I miss that we now have to lock up toothpaste?”
Commercial shoplifting victims in New York City feel like easy-marks, as seasoned thieves loot their stores in broad daylight with impunity. Many New Yorkers blame the 2019 bail reform law, which eliminates cash bail for most misdemeanor and non-violent felony charges.
Is it really such a leap from shoplifting pharmacy items in bulk or luxury goods from high-end stores and selling them on eBay or Facebook Marketplace, to glomming classified government documents that might realize a nice return from the highest international bidder, in cash or favors?
I don’t believe Palm Beach, Fla., has bail reform law like New York’s. Although, if you are apprehended in Florida for shoplifting, you could be transported to Martha’s Vineyard with the promise of housing, healthcare and employment.
In any case, bail reform or no bail reform, it doesn’t really matter to people that operate above the law. One way or another, they believe they will slide.
The U.S. National Archives locks up classified documents and has established protocols for reviewing them and declassifying them.
“It’s not just that [Trump] stole the docs. And it’s not just that he lied about them. It’s that every fact we learn makes it worse and worse,” tweeted Neal Katyal, former Solicitor General of the United States.
The fact is that Donald Trump stole and then concealed highly classified documents from the National Archives.
When discovered, the former president, who never missed an opportunity to brag about “backing the blue,” accused FBI agents of planting the documents in his beach house in Florida, effectively putting a target on their backs.
He lied. Nothing was planted by the FBI.
When the authorities first came to fetch the classified documents, Trump certified, through his attorney, that he returned them all.
He lied. He returned some and knowingly kept others.
When the FBI returned to his beach house with a subpoena, more classified documents were found in his office, desk and closets. Trump complained that the FBI agents didn’t remove their shoes.
He then asserted: “I declassified them.”
However, there is no paper trail at the National Archives or anywhere else in federal government to indicate that that was the case.
He lied. He declassified none of the stolen documents.
He has yet to account for the classified documents that presumably fit into the 43 empty folders the FBI found. He then said he was holding all the documents he stole from the National Archives for his presidential library. Even the missing and mutilated ones?
The Washington Post reported that “Some of the documents retrieved by the Archives had also been torn up, which Trump had a habit of doing.” Destroying documents that belong to the US government is a crime.
Trump’s MAGA-Republican election-denying base continues to play follow the leader and live by the Marx Brothers’ admonition, ‘Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”
Or, in Donald Trump’s own words, “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
Tell it to Duane Reade.
