Heather Cox Richardson

Not saying that Trump supporters are desperately trying to find a way to spin his theft, and subsequent hiding, of classified documents from the U.S. government, but there was actually an op-ed today in a major paper suggesting that the documents described by the Department of Justice and shown in last night’s explosive photo were just props because stacks of paper make Trump feel important.

I’m going to do the author of that piece a favor and not link to it in the notes.

Shortly afterward, Trump tore the ground out from under that argument—and most of the others his supporters were trying to make—by posting a complaint on his Truth Social network about the FBI photo documenting the stolen classified documents. “There seems to be confusion as to the ‘picture’ where documents were sloppily thrown on the floor and then released photographically for the world to see, as if that’s what the FBI found when they broke into my home. Wrong! They took them out of cartons and spread them around on the carpet….”

Lawyers point out that this is an admission that he had the documents and knew it.

His lawyer Alina Habba then went onto the Fox News Channel to complain about the photo and said, “I’m somebody who has been in his office…. I do have firsthand knowledge…. I have never, ever, seen that…. That is not the way his office looks…. He has guests frequently there.” His office had classified information in it, and his lawyer just said he entertains guests there. This is an intelligence nightmare.

Tonight, just before the deadline of 8:00, Trump’s lawyers filed a response to yesterday’s filing by the Department of Justice about the classified intelligence he hid at Mar-a-Lago. His lawyers argued that the FBI’s struggle to recover stolen classified documents was “the standard give-and-take between former Presidents and NARA regarding Presidential library contents.”

In Alaska tonight, Mary Peltola, who is Yup’ik, won a special election for the House seat left vacant after the death of Republican Don Young. A tribal fisheries manager and close family friend of the Youngs, Peltola defeated former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who was endorsed by former president Trump, to become the first Democrat in 50 years and the first woman ever to hold the seat and, while she was at it, the first Alaska Native ever elected to Congress. After winning Alaska’s House seat through ranked-choice voting, Peltola will again compete for it with Palin and her other challenger, Nick Begich III, in the regular election in November.

Executive Director of Voters of Tomorrow Santiago Mayer pointed out that the last time a Democrat sat in Alaska’s House seat was the same year the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. “If that’s not a…sign,” he tweeted, “I don’t know what is.”