Merrick Garland Strangely Unmoved By Trump Request To Do Us A Favor Though And Call Off The FBI

And Trump's lawyers need to call their own lawyers ASAP.

We quit. Your Wonkette is turning in our satire papers and moving to Antarctica to hang with the penguins, because we will never write anything as funny as the latest scoop from Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush:

Shortly before Mr. Garland made the announcement, a person close to Mr. Trump reached out to a Justice Department official to pass along a message from the former president to the attorney general. Mr. Trump wanted Mr. Garland to know he had been checking in with people around the country and found them to be enraged by the search.

Oh, really? Trump reached out to the sitting Attorney General to say that everyone in US America is hoppin' mad about a duly executed search warrant seeking the return of US government property and classified documents? The guy who campaigned on a promise of jailing his opponent for the improper handling of classified documents said “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go?" Sure, Trumpblew off a subpoenafor at least four months, but if AG Garland could just "do us a favor though," wouldn't that be better for everyone involved?

“The country is on fire,” Trump said, according to the Times's source. “What can I do to reduce the heat?”

Well, that certainly doesn't sound like him. But on the slim chance that that quote is "true," yeah, no shit the country's on fire! That's why Garland sent the FBI agents in there in plain clothes, with as little fanfare as possible, only to have that orange shitbird announce the "raid" himself, screeching about "prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024."

He also claimed to have been "working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies" to resolve the issue, conveniently omitting that he'd been asked to give the documents back, defied a subpoena, and refused to hand that shit over even after the head of the DOJ's counterintelligence division paid a personal visit to his lawyers.

Instead Trump's surrogates spent six straight days screaming about jackbooted thugs breaking down the door when they could just have asked nicely, and pretending that the whole fuss was about an overdue library book. Look at Pam Bondi, former Florida AG and veteran of Trump's first impeachment, fantasizing about the FBI storming the beach at Mar-a-Lago with guns a-blazin' to "make a statement."

“Bondi: They had agents in the water, agents in the air. You may have only seen 30-40 on the ground but there were hundreds of agents that had to have been weaponized to pull the assault off at Mar-a-Lago..”

— Acyn (@Acyn) 1660267259 

The country's on fire because Trump lit the match and dispatched his minions to slosh gallon after gallon of lighter fluid on it.

But wait, there's more! Tell us, NYT:

At least one lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump signed a written statement in June asserting that all material marked as classified and held in boxes in a storage area at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and club had been returned to the government, four people with knowledge of the document said.

The written declaration was made after a visit on June 3 to Mar-a-Lago by Jay I. Bratt, the top counterintelligence official in the Justice Department’s national security division.

Hey there, "one lawyer," maybe it's time to CALL YOUR LAWYER! Because that written declaration was patently not true , so there are only two possibilities here: Either the lawyer made that statement in the mistaken belief that it was true, in which case he or she has now become a witness against the client. Or the lawyer knew it was false at the time, which is way worse.

In any event, it goes some way to explaining the reference in the warrant to 18 U.S. Code § 1519 , which makes it a crime to cover up, falsify, or destroy "any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States[.]" Telling the government that you don't have any more classified documents in the storage room in the hallway by the pool when you know you do would fit that bill.

Multiple outlets have reported that the DOJ issued a second subpoena for security camera footage of the storage room, and the Times sources said that whatever was on that tape freaked out investigators at the FBI. And as for the theory that Trump telepathically declassified the documents with the power of his bigly brain, Haberman and Thrush write that the FBI has talked to a shit ton of Trump's former and current aides. If there was a "standing order" to declassify any documents Trump took to the Oval Office they'd have said so.

(Spoiler Alert:  Fuck off .)

In summary and in conclusion, shit is getting real for Trump. Who should still rot in prison for inciting an attack on the seat of government, also, too. But if he winds up in classified email jail, there will be a certain karmic beauty to that as well.

[ NYT ]

Follow Liz Dye on Twitter!

Click the widget to keep your Wonkette ad-free and feisty. And if you're ordering from Amazon, use this link, because reasons .