During his Thursday night primetime address on election security, President Trump dropped a detail that kind of deserves more than a passing mention. As USA Journal reported, Trump revealed that significant numbers of burn bags containing sensitive Obama administration documents were discovered sitting in the FBI building. Bags full of classified materials that were explicitly ordered to be incinerated. Bags that, for whatever reason, just sat there like a forgotten lunch in the break room fridge.
"Maybe we got lucky," Trump said. That might be the understatement of the decade.
For the uninitiated, burn bags are containers used to collect classified materials destined for destruction. They are a completely normal part of government operations. What is decidedly not normal is finding a bunch of them still intact, unburned, full of documents from an outgoing administration that apparently wanted those papers turned to ash before the next guy moved in. The federal government can track a nickel across seven agencies but somehow forgot to light a match. Classic.
Trump has ordered the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the DOJ, the FBI, and the CIA to review the contents. They are looking at what the documents contain, whether any laws were broken in how they were handled, and who exactly was responsible for the chain of custody from "please destroy these" to "oops, they are still here."
Now, the predictable response is already making the rounds. Finding documents does not prove a conspiracy. Criminal charges require more than political accusations. You need to establish knowing violations of federal law. All technically correct. Also entirely missing the point. Nobody is saying unburned bags equal a crime. What they equal is an opportunity to read things that somebody very much did not want anyone reading. And that is a pretty interesting thing to have land in your lap.
The context here is what makes it spicy. Trump's address also revealed that CIA analysts reportedly softened assessments of Chinese election interference, that FBI officials described running a "shadow government" to hide election intelligence from the White House, and that NSA members allegedly altered Presidential Daily Briefings to conceal findings that China was working to defeat the sitting president. All of this reportedly occurred during the Obama to Biden transition period and the early Trump years.
So you have intelligence agencies allegedly playing games with classified information, and then you find bags full of documents from that same era that someone ordered destroyed but never got around to actually destroying. The government spends billions on operations and could not complete the one task that required a match and some patience.
The review is underway. Federal investigators with subpoena power are now going through the contents. Whatever is in those bags will eventually come to light. Meanwhile, the damage control messaging is already running full speed on documents nobody outside the investigation has even seen yet. Which is an interesting strategic choice if there is truly nothing to worry about.
Somewhere in the FBI building, somebody had one job. They did not do it. And now the administration that was not supposed to come back is reading the homework that was supposed to be ashes.
Read more conservative news commentary at: USA Journal News
