Breaking news on Trump search

The Washington Post tonight used the “N” word in a story about the search of Mar a Lago.

Nuclear.

According to a story published about an hour ago, FBI agents were looking for “classified documents relating to nuclear weapons” when they searched the Florida home of Donald Trump on Monday. It is unknown at this hour whether such ultra-top-secret documents were among those recovered in the search of Mar a Lago. Attorney General Merrick Garland has filed a motion in federal court in Florida seeking permission to release the text of the search warrant and the “redacted Property Receipt listing items seized pursuant to the search.”

The only reason the word “redacted” would be in the text of the motion filed by Garland is that the Department of Justice knows the contents of the documents seized and is aware that they will have to “redact,” or blacken-out at least some of the list of documents because of the sensitive nature of the secrets they contain.

I wrote yesterday that the DOJ had to have a very, very good reason to get a search warrant for the home of a former president and I thought what they may have been looking for was evidence that would lead to a charge of violating the Espionage Act. The Washington Post story tonight is another step in that direction. As my Substack commenter Difi pointed out in the comments tonight, the Washington Post scoop “changes everything…No way to rationalize having nuclear top secrets exists.”

Indeed, there is no legal rationalization for having nuclear top secrets in your possession, but there could be an illegal reason: because you are going to sell them.

We still don’t know what Trump and Putin discussed during their private meeting in Helsinki in 2018. It’s at least possible that part of that discussion may have been conducted with hand-signals, as in Putin holding up five fingers and Trump shaking his head and holding up ten, each finger indicating a billion dollars.

Stay tuned.