What would have been the point?
Something to think about: Trump already knew that if he was forced out of office he’d be criminally incited in Manhattan and end up in prison. It may be why he’s committed such an escalating series of crimes ever since. The insurrection and the fake electors were an attempt at remaining in office so he could avoid going to prison in Manhattan.
Once those criminal plots failed to protect him from his Manhattan crimes, he knew he was going to prison anyway, so he stole classified intel on his way out the door. Maybe he stupidly thought he could use it as leverage, or sell it to pay for his Manhattan trial lawyers, or whatever.
Trump is a lifelong criminal. But once he realized he was in danger of finally being brought to justice in Manhattan for his original decades-long financial crimes, he started committing crimes of escalating severity – all seemingly for fear of being brought to justice for his original crimes.
The kicker is that with the way things played out in Manhattan, those charges weren’t brought for another two years anyway – and for all we know might not have been brought at all if he’d simply left office peacefully and then stayed out of politics forever.
The Manhattan charges are also the least severe charges he’s facing, as often happens to people who commit one crime and then end up committing escalating crimes to try to avoid going down for the first crime.
So when you ask why Trump didn’t just return the classified documents when he was asked to, you have to keep in mind that it wouldn’t have saved him. He still would have gotten indicted in Manhattan, and in Fulton County, and the DOJ still would have indicted him for January 6th.
Trump is the guy who tried to quietly rob a bank while no one was looking (Manhattan), got caught, committed violence while trying to escape (1/6), and when that didn’t work, took hostages (the documents).
You wouldn’t ask why the bank robber didn’t just release the hostages; the answer is obvious. When you’re backed into that kind of corner, and you know you’re going down no matter what, the moves you make tend to be desperate rather than rational. Yes, the bank robber will face fewer years in prison if he just releases the hostages when he’s asked to. But he’s still going to prison for a whole lot of years, so in his mind what’s the point?
In the end, Trump was sitting there rotting away in his broken down home, with boxes of classified documents sitting in a bathtub. Instead of going through the boxes and pulling out the most valuable documents and hiding them, and shredding the rest to hide the evidence trail, he just *sat there* with the boxes in a bathtub. Those were his hostages, and in his desperate deluded mind, the only thing keeping him from going prison.
There was never any grand plan here. This was an escalating series of crimes to try to avoid being brought to justice for his original crimes. He didn’t give the classified documents back because it wouldn’t have helped him any. What would he have gained by going to prison for thirty years instead of forty?
We’re going to keep hearing the narrative for awhile that “if he’d just given the documents back he’d have been fine.” But that narrative willfully ignores all the other criminal indictments that Trump has faced and will soon face.
The question has never been whether Trump can survive a criminal trial between now and the election. The question is whether Trump can survive *four* criminal trials between now and the election – and the answer to that question is an obvious no. That’s why he didn’t give the classified documents back.
The narrative-spinners can spend all week willfully ignoring the big picture. But the cold hard reality is that Trump knew he’d end up in prison for the rest of his life even if he gave the documents back. What would have been the point?
