Why Did Trump Take All Those Documents to Palm Beach?

I haven’t been paying much attention to the case in Florida against Trump who is charged with illegally removing documents from the White House and stacking up the cartons of filched materials in a Mar-a-Lago toilet at Palm Beach. The case is scheduled for a trial to begin on May 20, which is right in the middle of the 2024 Presidential campaign, and Trump has been trying, without success, to delay the trial until sometime after the election, which is scheduled for Tuesday, November 5th.

In a new filing by Jack Smith’s team which argues against delaying the trial, a reporter from WaPo — Aaron Blake — has found what he refers to as a ‘tantalizing hint’ about how the government will present its case, and the hint appears to be wording to the effect that the government will make a case based on Trump’s intent in stealing the documents in the first place.

There’s no argument that there were classified documents in Trump’s bathroom stash, and that the initial response to the government’s request for the documents to be turned over to the National Archives was refused.

But was the refusal and the prior transport of the materials simply a mistake because nobody working for Trump knew that the documentation included classified (I.e., secret) materials which are not allowed to be removed from governmental…