August 13, 2022

Trump’s Excuses for Hoarding Classified Documents Are Getting More Absurd

You can’t work from home for a job you no longer have.

Adrien Fillon/ZUMA

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As more details continue to come out about the Justice Department’s investigation into whether Donald Trump may have violated the Espionage Act and other laws, the former president’s defenses have only grown more chaotic. Trump debuted his latest alibi late Friday, issuing a statement that claimed he had a “standing order” that declassified all documents from the moment they were removed from the White House and taken to the “residence.”

Here’s pro-Trump journalist John Solomon, who in 2020 was cut off from Fox News for peddling disinformation on the Bidens and Ukraine, relaying the message on Fox News: 

Even from a cursory glance, the statement appears to contain several problematic, if not wholly nonsensical, claims. First off, as my colleague Dan Friedman pointed out, it doesn’t outline a legal rationale for Trump keeping top secret documents once he was no longer in office—and then refusing to return the classified documents once the National Archives and eventually, the Justice Department, requested them. Second, none of the potential violations Trump is now under investigation for depend on classification, rendering the supposed “standing order” assertion moot. Third, the statement appears to blatantly contradict the conspiracy-laden suggestion, pushed by Republicans and Trump himself, that any damaging evidence may have been planted at Mar-a-Lago.

But the most absurd feature of Trump’s excuse could be its ham-fisted attempt to relate to the everyday person working from home. “Everyone ends up having to bring home their work from time to time,” the statement via Solomon read. “American presidents are no different.” Add that to the even more unbelievable assertion that Donald Trump works at all—and you’ll be left wondering, once again, how did things get this stupid.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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