Those of us who live in the reality-based world are having a difficult time keeping up with the former president’s crimes. If it is a day that ends in “y” we seem to learn another bit of damning information about something he did to obstruct justice, intimidate witnesses, and/or overthrow the government so he could retain power.

On Wednesday, the DOJ released information that indicated that Donald Trump and his loyal employees at Mar-a-Lago (aka indicted co-conspirators) were not being truthful about the locks and surveillance video in the stolen classified documents case. Yes, I know you’re shocked. Shocked!

Lawyer and investigative journalist Marcy Wheeler lays this out on her Empty Wheel blog. The entire piece is rather short and I encourage you to read it, but the nub of the matter is that in all the work at Mar-a-Lago to move and hide the boxes that held the nation’s classified secrets, Trump and his minions moved some into the residence and then changed the locks on a closet within the residence — one that may have stored some subset of the roughly 35 boxes that didn’t get moved back into the storage closet so Trump’s lawyer and ultimately the FBI could search them. And they changed the lock on the closet before adding a lock — as requested — to the main storage facility.

When FBI agents arrived at Mar-a-Lago the morning of Aug. 8 with a court-issued search warrant, (Carlos) De Oliveira was one of the first people they turned to. They asked him to unlock a storage room where boxes of documents were kept, people familiar with what happened said. De Oliveira said he wasn’t sure where the key was, because he’d given it to either the Secret Service agents guarding the former president or staffers for Trump’s post-presidency office, the people said.

Frustrated, the agents simply cut the lock on the gold-colored door. The incident became part of what investigators would see as a troubling pattern with the answers De Oliveira gave them as they investigated Trump, the people said.

I wasn’t the first person to read this story and think of Dr. John, the New Orleans musician who mixed blues, jazz, funk, and R&B into his one-of-a-kind gumbo. Dr. John’s tune Somebody Changed the Lock fits this story perfectly, especially with the classic line: “Somebody changed the lock on my door … And I, I know, something is definitely going on wrong.”

Somebody changed the lock on my door, yeah, now
And my key, it won’t fit in that lock no more
I’ve been standin’ on my little front porch all night long, mm-mm
And I, I know, something is definitely going on wrong
You know that the lights is dim, the shades are way down low, yes
And I knocked and knocked, until my fist got sore, ah, play it now

Those New Orleans cats know their criminals. One year ago this week, the breaking news on the classified documents had me turning to the great James Booker song Classified. It was Dr. John himself who described Booker as “the best black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano genius New Orleans has ever produced.” 

Stay tuned for more revelations and perhaps some more New Orleans-style police reports. Because today does ends with a “y”.

More to come …

DJB

Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay