"Hey, Si-Woo, as soon as the funds hit my Zurich account, I will leave you-know-what under the ball washer at the 11th hole at that certain golf course." That's the kind of Spy Who Came in From the Cold scenario the liberal media are dreaming of as it speculated over Donald Trump's motivation in reportedly retaining classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
And, on Tuesday's Morning Joe, MSNBC contributor Katty Kay, also of the BBC, pushed that possibility. She asked former US Attorney Chuck Rosenberg: "How would we know, or how would the Justice Department go about trying to find out what Donald Trump intended to do with those documents? Did he intend to use them for some kind of profit in any way for himself?"
She then showed her supposed expert analysis by warning Trump had "ultra-secret documents, where I imagine there would be an awful lot of concern," so she wanted to know "[w]hat's going to be the process there for finding out whether he intended to do something nefarious with them for his own benefit? Because, that would seem to be the key to whether this was really going to land him in legal jeopardy."
"Ultra-secret" documents, Katty? Uh-oh! Could that land Trump on double-secret probation?
Rosenberg praised Kay for her "great question," and proceeded to launch into a spiel about how, even if the DoJ can't get an honest answer from Trump, if would interview those in his circle to whom he might have spoken about his intentions.
And Rosenberg floated the tantalizing-to-the-liberal-media possibility that Trump might have committed "espionage" by profiting from the documents or handing them to a foreign power.
Kay suggesting Trump might have done something "nefarious" and sold "ultra-secret" documents was sponsored in part by Johnson & Johnson, maker of Neutrogena, SoFi, Liberty Mutual, and AT&T.
Here's the transcript. Click "expand" to read.
MSNBC's Morning Joe
08/23/22
6:12 am EDTKATTY KAY: Chuck, can I ask you a little more about this issue of intent? Because, as you say, this is key here. And a lot of Trump supporters are saying, well, this is a former president. He'd like to have these souvenirs. So he kept the letter from Kim Jong-un at home. You know, it was written to him, after all. I think there's some sympathy among Trump supporters with some of the material that he was keeping. How would we know, or how would the Justice Department go about trying to find out what Donald Trump intended to do with those documents? Did he intend to use them for some kind of profit in any way for himself? Particularly, perhaps, these ones that are ultra-secret documents, where I imagine there would be an awful lot of concern? What's going to be the process there for finding out whether he intended to do something nefarious with them for his own benefit? Because, that would seem to be the key to whether this was really going to land him in legal jeopardy.
CHUCK ROSENBERG: Yeah, it's great question, Katty. So, you're talking about an aspect of the case that concerns us the mo -- those of us who worked in this classified environment, the most. Was there a transmission, or an attempted transmission, of these documents? In other words, if somebody, Trump or anyone else, has classified information and wants to profit from it, or simply hand it over to a foreign power to the detriment of the United States, that's the most serious type of mishandling. It is really, actually, espionage, so one way you prove that, of course, is by looking at the people around Trump, and who he spoke to, and what they understood, and the conversations they had with the former President. Katty, if I wanted to know what you were thinking about a particular topic, I could ask you, but maybe you wouldn't tell me, or maybe you wouldn't tell me the truth, so therefore, I'd have to talk to all the people that talk to you, right? If I can't get it directly from you, for one reason or another, maybe you confided in someone else. Or maybe someone had an argument with you, Katty, about how you were handling the classified information, and were so disturbed by what they learned from you, that they wanted to pass it to the FBI, so one of the reasons these investigations take a long time is, you have to talk to a whole bunch of people. You may not be able to talk to Mr. Trump directly, or get anything useful from him, or get anything that's honest or candid from him. But you can talk to all the people around him. Those who worked for him, those who worked at Mar-a-Lago, those who visited him. Perhaps he showed the documents to other people. Perhaps he told other people what he intended to do with the documents. None of this is a sure-fire way to get to what he intended, but these are proxies to get to what he intended, particularly if you don't have access to him and to his brain.
