(…) The indictment accuses President Trump of withholding documents containing “classified markings,” a very specifically deployed obtuse wording intended to create the implication of something nefarious where nothing nefarious exists. It is entirely possible for a person, any person, especially a person who follows the news, to possess documents containing “classified markings.”
There is a big difference between a classified document and a document containing classified markings. As an example, anyone who has looked at the Carter Page FISA application made public in July 2018, has reviewed a document containing “classified markings.” When a document is declassified, they do not remove the markings.
You might think this is a one-off use of the “documents with classification markings” lingo, but it’s not. This language is the underpinning of the entire DOJ/FBI framework that predicated the raid on Mar-a-Lago. Specifically, neither NARA nor the DOJ-NSD requested President Trump or his team to return Classified Documents. The DOJ demanded the return of any documents that contained “classified markings.” [SEE BELOW]
Because the verbiage is so intentionally obtuse (ie. Lawfare), a fulsome production in compliance with this DOJ demand would include any newspaper or magazine articles that had a picture of the Carter Page FISA application, or any printed online article that might contain the same or similar elements. There is a big difference between asking for a classified document return, and asking for a return of documents that contain “classified markings.” [Example from CTH, below]
As a result, it is entirely possible, I would say almost certain, that President Trump -and his legal team- returned every document that contained classified information but may have omitted documents that retained “classified markings”. There’s the spirit of compliance, and the letter of absolute compliance when contrasted against a very granular interpretation of the request.
It is obvious from the demand, the DOJ/FBI was casting a wide net on the compliance side, knowing that amid hundreds of thousands of presidential documents and records, there would be obscure documents with classified markings that had nothing to do with national security. Thus, the “classified markings” establishes a Lawfare compliance tactic.
It will be interesting to see how this nonsense progresses. It becomes easier to call it nonsense, when you simply accept the approach being used. If the DOJ-NSD, FBI, Special Counsel or NARA were genuinely interested in ‘national security issues’, they would not be playing obtuse word games in order to structure court filings simply for media narrative engineering and propaganda purposes.
Again, all of these insufferable pretending elements simply create more avenues for smart legal minds to highlight to the court. The judges can see through this nonsense, and their action or lack thereof becomes part of showcasing their own agenda. Fortunately, Judge Cannon has a very solid background on the Mar-a-Lago documents case. She wouldn’t need to have this stuff pointed out to her; she has already experienced it. (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 6/10/2023) (Archive)