The Poodle Scratches: State Secrets in the Bathroom?

TOP SECRET:  No one wants to state the obvious. But sometimes, the historical moment demands it. 

So let me ask: Did you see Trump’s bathroom?

The chandelier dripping from the ceiling — in a bathroom? — was bad enough. But the incoherent jumble of boxes creating a Berlin Wall between the shower stall and the commode should offend the feng shui sensibilities of even the most oblivious.

Interior decorators of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your … minds.

Each of these boxes contains documents that have been classified Top Secret, Secret, or merely Confidential. These papers detail info that had been divulged at high-level security briefings to which Trump was duly entitled back when he was, in fact, the president.  

If in the wrong hands, these documents could identify American intelligence assets — spies and informants — in places such as Iran and China, who, in turn, could be compromised — which is the bureaucratically antiseptic way of referring to what are otherwise known as “wet jobs” in the trade craft language of paperback spy novels that clutter my brain and bedside table.

But the bathroom? 

In a perverse way, I suspect the bathroom photos — the publication of which, I am informed, has caused Trump a level of personal humiliation somewhere between scalding and searing — might be his best defense.

No spy in his, her, or their right mind would think to look for state secrets in an ex-president’s bathroom. 

Trump could argue the documents were safer there than had they been in Fort Knox.

And he might accidentally be telling the truth. 

Unlike the previous criminal indictment brought against the 45th occupant of the White House — lying about hush money paid to a porn star on the eve of an election is something any one of us might easily have done — this indictment is decidedly not nothing. 

Even if you are not drunk, it is genuinely sobering.

Again, have you seen the pictures?

Among the Top Secret documents Trump hid from the FBI and the federal grand jury in his bathroom are reports on such things as the United States nuclear programs, potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack, plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack, and the weapon capabilities of the United States.

Once upon a time, Republicans cared about such things as national security. Once upon a time, national security considerations were so critical they were used to justify doing anything to anyone, anywhere, and frequently were.

Initially, Trump stored most of these boxes of documents in Mar-a-Lago’s storage room. Between January 2021 and August 2022, Mar-a-Lago hosted 150 large social events, weddings, movie premieres, and fundraisers that drew tens of thousands of guests. The storage room was just down the hallway from where Mar-a-Lago stashed a Vesuvian abundance of liquor bottles. 

These documents are the property of the National Archives, not Donald J. Trump. After repeated requests by Archives officials to return them, the FBI finally had to get involved. Trump falsely told the agents he had returned the boxes, and then had his stooges move them to other places, like the bathroom. 

In fact, he hid the boxes in the bathroom from his own attorney because his attorney was intent on cooperating with the FBI. Trump also told his own attorney that he had little interest in cooperating with the FBI. “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?” Trump reportedly asked his attorney. “Isn’t it better if there are no documents?” Or, more honestly: “I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t.”

I understand the fetishistic glee in being able to read top-secret documents while sitting on the toilet. It’s special. And I might not want anybody looking through my boxes either. But when you ask your attorney — an officer of the court — to lie outright to federal investigators, that crosses a bright legal line. When you then lie and hide stuff from your own attorney so that he doesn’t know that he’s misinforming federal investigators, that too crosses a line. It’s called a crime. 

Once upon a time, Republicans ostensibly cared about crime. 

Trump showed some of these top-secret documents to other people, including writers working on a book about him. He told them the documents were super-secret and that they should not be seeing them, but he showed them anyway. That demonstrates awareness of the law and an articulated intention to break it. 

Once upon a time, Republicans were the party of law and order.

Wisely, the Democratic Party has seized upon talking points not to talk about it. Doing so would only serve to further inflame the other side. And after sputtering about Trump nonstop for seven years, even they have grown weary.

History has a way of circling back on itself. That’s certainly the case here. It was Santa Barbara’s ubiquitous Republican on the make, Mike Stoker, who at the 2016 Republican National Convention launched the “Lock her up” chant, referring to Hillary Clinton and the national security protocols she violated by storing and sending sensitive national security emails on her personal server. The FBI chose not to prosecute because it could find no intent on Clinton’s part, but the investigation — and its timing — clearly cost Clinton the 2016 election against Trump. Can now we expect Stoker to lead us all in a rousing chant of “Lock him up”?

No. That would be too obvious.