I wonder if the far right republican fascist hate drag because it is the opposite of what they are. Drag is about exploring boundaries, about expressing yourself, about color and fun. What is authoritarian fascism about? doing what you are told, stay in the line, don’t be an individual, don’t be colorful, always fit nicely in the boxes. Hugs
Over the past year, the sense of safety and joy experienced at drag performances has been punctured and replaced.
“Baby, you’re a plaaaaaaastic bag,” sings the drag queen Per Sia, parodying Katy Perry’s “Firework” as reusable tote bags sail around a usually-silent library in San Francisco. The children around her delight in the chaos, hanging on to Sia’s every word. Between sermons on the importance of reducing plastic and loving yourself, the kids leap up, grab the floating tote bags, and begin to dance. Their bodies wiggle with glee as they experience the joy — costumes! music! dance! — of drag.
The scene would be familiar to any kindergarten teacher: “It’s the play and pleasure of reading time, but dialed up a few notches,” says Harper Keenan, a Professor of Education and Pedagogy at the University of British Columbia. Keenan is referring to Drag Story Hour, events where drag performers read, sing, and make crafts with children in schools, libraries, and bookstores across the country.
Sia, who is an elementary school teacher, says that when she began performing for Drag Story Hours, “we would walk into schools and get treated like royalty.” Initially the opportunity to integrate her expertise in early childhood education with drag was a dream come true. It was a chance to embody her full humanity and show students that a world existed in which they could unapologetically be themselves, too.
Over the past year, however, that sense of safety and joy has been punctured and replaced with a miasma of fear and danger. A year ago, a sizeable backlash against the art form seemed an improbability, but this year, threats against drag performances across the country, including Drag Story Hours, have increased in number and hostility. In Oklahoma, a donut shop was fire-bombed for the second time this year after hosting a drag performance. In Nevada, a man identified as a member of the Proud Boys, a white nationalist group, interrupted a Drag Story Hour reading with a gun, forcing the children in attendance to flee for safety. And in California, a group of eight Proud Boys stormed into a library where drag performer Panda Dulce was reading to children. The men made white power hand gestures and hurtled homophobic and transphobic comments at Dulce, who was rushed out of the room, along with the children. According to several parents in attendance, the far-right protesters were traumatizing the children they claimed to want to protect.
These are just some specific examples of a worsening trend. This already-horrific year, which saw at least 124 significant threats and protests against drag performances, according to a November report from GLAAD, was punctuated by immense tragedy on November 19, when a shooter killed five people during a “Drag Divas” night at Club Q in Colorado Springs. An art form that has provided LGBTQ+ people a sense of community for decades has been weaponized against them, and has forced drag queens to question what safety means in a culture intent on causing them harm.
Per Sia, courtesy of the artist.
The current string of attacksagainst drag performers is part of a broader movement by the far-right to demonize LGBTQ+ people, including by claiming they are “groomers” and “pedophiles,” and therefore a threat to young children. Across the media landscape, from Fox News host Tucker Carlson to the far-right podcast InfoWars, conservative pundits are increasingly perpetuating the dangerous, harmful lie that proximity to drag queens and trans and nonbinary people increases the likelihood of child abuse.
Accounts like Libs of TikTok, a conservative social media account that has become notorious for anti-queer and anti-drag rhetoric, post videos making fun of LGBTQ+ people and drag performers without context or consent. The video has also been caught posting doctored videos that make it seem as if drag queens are performing sexually in front of children, even if the videos are blatantly false. Criminal investigators even believe that Libs of TikTok may have provoked the Proud Boys attack on Drag Story Hour in California. In a segment from October, Carlson, who has been a vocal supporter of the social media account, called on his three million nightly viewers to “arm” themselves against drag performers. This messaging has been dangerously effective: according to the Human Rights Campaign, there was a 406% increase in tweets using “groomer” or “pedophile” in the first six months of 2022. Tragically, there has been accompanying escalation of attacks on drag performers during the same period.
“The LGBTQ+ community is constantly at the whim of disinformation and misinformation,” activist Raquel Willis wrote on Instagram the day after the Colorado Springs shooting. “Hateful politicians craft dangerous narratives about us and encourage the general public to continue to do the same. Ignorance is disgusting AF and we need to be vigilant about confronting it.”
As Willis notes, these in-person acts of violence are often stoked — and, in some cases, engineered — by far-right politicians. Florida Governor Ron Desantis has stated that parents who bring children to drag shows should be investigated for child abuse. Florida Senator Marco Rubio even featured Lil Miss Hot Mess, a member of Drag Story Hour, in a reelection campaign video in which he claimed that the “radical left” seeks to “indoctrinate children and turn boys into girls.” These politicians foster a climate of fear in which hatred and misinformation proliferates.
However, as many drag performers are quick to point out, this rhetoric obscures the fact that gender identity and drag are distinct, though sometimes overlapping, categories. Both cisgender men and transgender women, for example, can do drag. Crucially, though, “drag generally refers to a kind of consciously artistic performance intended for an audience. In contrast, trans people do not seek primarily to entertain,” wrote Keenan and Lil’ Miss Hot Mess in a June 2021 academic article about Drag Story Hour.
According to Keenan, though, violence against drag queens is rooted in transmisogyny, or the intersection of transphobia and misogyny as experienced by trans women and transfeminine people. In videos such as Rubio’s, the phrase “turning boys into girls” exemplifies this trans and femme-phobic line of attack, and the underlying truth that the far-right’s goal is not simply to stop all-ages drag performances. It is to exploit transphobia for political points, no matter the cost to human life.
In a year in whichover 300 state bills have been introduced to curb LGBTQ+ student and teacher rights, what’s become clear is that a rising right-wing moral panic against LGBTQ+ people — including smearing drag performers as groomers, nonbinary children as mentally ill, and gender-affirming healthcare providers as pedophiles — has ensnared the drag community. Today, after Club Q, it’s become increasingly clear that this rhetoric has concrete, real-world ramifications.
Guy Smallman/Getty Images
“It’s the scariest it’s ever been. I fear for my safety, even when I’m not doing Story Hour,” said Sia. The attacks have left many drag performers feeling torn between doing what they love and subjecting themselves to the possibility of violence, leading some drag queens to pause or stop their performances altogether. Programmers at one San Antonio music venue, were forced to cancel an entire season of drag performances due to violent threats. In North Carolina, when the power went out during a drag performance, performers said their immediate instinct was to listen for gunfire.
Paradoxically, some experts believe that the far-right has taken such extreme steps against drag performances because drag has become so popular. The visibility of shows such as RuPaul’s Drag Race, drag brunches, and online drag personalities have enabled performers to share their unique vision of liberation—and millions of people have found that vision appealing.
Drag Story Hours and family brunches, in particular, have helped LGBTQ+ youth feel accepted and seen. Keenan notes the surprising number of straight parents among attendees of drag story hours and brunches nationwide. “They’re looking for resources,” he says, to provide their children with a LGBTQ+ affirming space that they may not know how to cultivate at home. It is a chance to move past the rigid expectations of gender they were raised with, and offer their children something new.
All of this visibility comes at a cost. It has drawn attention to some of the most vulnerable members of the LGBTQ+ community, such as the trans, queer, and femme people of color who pioneered the “iconic” dance moves and looks we now associate with drag, without protection. “If what you really want is to target queerness and transness, then drag is a huge part of that. It’s a visible celebration of culture,” said the attorney Chase Strangio in a recent interview with The Atlantic.
Boston Globe/Getty Images
Indeed, in the midst of escalating fear and violence, drag performances continue to offer a unique form of celebration as resistance. This impulse toward new worlds was on full display during a recent prom for LGBTQ+ youth in Birmingham, Alabama. During the drag portion of the night, performer Sharon Cocx unexpectedly stopped in the middle of her set.
“You can be anything you want to be. You can be president, you can change the world,” she told the crowd. After such a difficult year in the state — Alabama has passed some of the strictest anti-trans legislation in the country — it was a cathartic moment of release for the directly-impacted teens there. According to several people who attended the event, many were in tears by the end of the speech. This is drag’s unique power: to challenge the conditions of the present, and embody a longed-for future.
The day after the attack in San Lorenzo,Per Sia had a performance a few miles away in Piedmont, CA. When she arrived at the library, half a dozen police officers were outside with their sirens on, “which was triggering in and of itself,” she said. Since many performers, like Sia, are queer people of color, the presence of police at performances can feel like a compounding of the violence they face, not an alleviation of it. As a result, organizers across the country have created safety plans rooted in abolitionist frameworks. These plans seek to keep children and performers safe without involving the police.
As Sia entered the library, several staff members walked her through a hastily developed safety plan, which Sia had never experienced before. They walked up a claustrophobic flight of stairs. “If anything happens, I will bring you up here,” the librarian said, “Then go down this hall and hide under that desk. If anything happens, do not come out until you hear my voice.” In her decades of teaching children and performing drag, it was unlike anything Sia had experienced before. It was terrifying in a visceral, cruel way.
“It was a hard pill to swallow,” she said, “but queer folks are resilient. We have always had to fight for our basic needs to be met, and simply to exist.” The performance took place in the library’s parking lot during a cloudless, blue summer day. The sunlight streamed over Sia as she read to the jam-packed crowd, who hung on her every word. Many had come to support Drag Story Hour in response to the previous day’s violence. “It was beautiful,” she said. “It really, really was.”
William J. Walker, the head of the D.C. National Guard during the insurrection, also indicated he thought more people in the crowd would have died if the mob had been largely Black instead of overwhelmingly white.
William J. Walker testifies before a Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in Washington, on March 3, 2021. Shawn Thew / Pool via AP file
WASHINGTON — The House sergeant at arms, who was the head of the D.C. National Guard during the attack on the Capitol, told the Jan. 6 committee that the law enforcement response would have looked much different had the rioters been Black Americans.
“I’m African American. Child of the sixties. I think it would have been a vastly different response if those were African Americans trying to breach the Capitol,” William J. Walker told congressional investigators, in an interview transcript released Tuesday. “As a career law enforcement officer, part-time soldier, last five years full but, but a law enforcement officer my entire career, the law enforcement response would have been different.”
His testimony echoed the observations of many Americans, including President Joe Biden, who noted the stark difference in the law enforcement response to protests in Washington following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd and the lax security at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
William J. Walker, the head of the D.C. National Guard during the insurrection, also indicated he thought more people in the crowd would have died if the mob had been largely Black instead of overwhelmingly white.
“You know, as a law enforcement officer, there were — I saw enough to where I would have probably been using deadly force,” he said. “I think it would have been more bloodshed if the composition would have been different.”
Walker, a former Drug Enforcement Administration official who became the House sergeant at arms in April 2021, also described his personal experiences with discriminatory law enforcement stops, and discussed having “the talk” with his five children and his granddaughter about surviving police encounters as a Black American.
“You’re looking at somebody who would get stopped by the police for driving a high-value government vehicle. No other reason,” Walker said.
Demonstrators rally at the U.S. Capitol, on Jan. 6, 2021.Jose Luis Magana / AP file
The D.C. National Guard was not authorized to assist at the Capitol on Jan. 6 until after a delay of 3 hours and 19 minutes that the House committee’s report pins on a “likely miscommunication between members of the civilian leadership in the Department of Defense.”
Walker told investigators that it was clear to him beforehand that Jan. 6 was going to be a “big deal” just from being aware of what was happening in the world.
“I’m an intelligence officer … to me, the intelligence was there that this was going to be a big deal,” he said, citing the civil unrest in November and December when Trump supporters came to Washington.
“You don’t need intelligence. I mean, everybody knew that people were directed to come there by the president. November was a run-up, December was practice, and January 6th was executed,” Walker said.
“I personally, William Joseph Walker, not General Walker, thought that it was just vastly different,” he said, comparing the unrest of summer 2020 to the unrest after the election. “National Guard is not called in December. National Guard is not called in November. And I watched on television the difference between people coming to the Capitol in November. And if you watch the film, and if these same groups came back in December, better prepare. Better prepare.”
As NBC News first reported last month, the Jan. 6 committee made a decision to focus its final report on former President Donald Trump, and not as much on the law enforcement and intelligence failures and other issues that committee staffers investigated. Part of the panel’s investigation into intelligence failures was ultimately relegated to an appendix, though the report did note that “Federal and local law enforcement authorities were in possession of multiple streams of intelligence predicting violence directed at the Capitol prior to January 6th.”
A spokesman for Jan. 6 panel member Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., told The Washington Post last month that committee staffers had “submitted subpar material for the report that reflects long-held liberal biases about federal law enforcement” and that she would not “sign onto any ‘narrative’ that suggests Republicans are inherently racist or smears men and women in law enforcement.”
Still, the testimony of Walker — a highly decorated commanding general and a long-serving DEA special agent who rose to top leadership positions at the agency before becoming the first Black House sergeant at arms — underscores some of the systemic issues that went unaddressed in the committee’s final report.
Substations are being attacked across the United States by Right Wing Extremist groups. Meidas Contributor Texas Paul explains that this is more than just terrorism, it’s a coordinated plot deriving from the Kremlin.
For those who wonder why I get so upset over the right wing media / fox Tucker Carlson / libs of TT claiming that drag queens are groomers, teachers are sexualizing kids in their classrooms, and using violence to shut down drag shows. Even the crap about trans women using the bathroom is going to let “men” rape your little daughters”. Yet none of these people are talking about the people really sexually assaulting kids. I tend to go to the news stories and dogs that love gravy I have to stop doing that as some of the things these religious people are accused of doing by legal authorities, not twitter or Facebook but real law enforcement people, trigger me so bad it causes daytime problems and nightmares. And it is everyday. But no republican in office is addressing it. DeathSantis the Christian savior who forced through the don’t say gay bills outlawing LGBTQI+ in schools and the anti-history bills claiming talking about the reality of slavery is woke and CRT while making white kids sad, never says a word about these religious leaders. Never out laws them? But does give their leaders permission to go into the schools and start clubs. Setting up future kids to be abused. Hugs
This is very long. But informative. Worth the read even if you do it in parts. It explains how lose and fragmented the security is at the Mar-a-Largo club and how trump is even more convinced rules and laws do not appeal to him. He really keeps trying to recreate his former presidency because to him he still is president. Hugs
The inside story of how Trump transplanted the chaos and norm flouting of his White House into his post-presidential life, leading to a criminal investigation into his handling of classified documents that presents potential legal peril
Updated December 18, 2022 at 10:19 p.m. EST| Published December 18, 2022 at 3:46 p.m. EST
Former president Donald Trump speaks at a political rally in Warren, Mich., on Oct. 1. (Sarah Rice for The Washington Post)
PALM BEACH, Fla. — When Donald Trump invited the rapper formerly known as Kanye West and white supremacist Nick Fuentes to join him for dinner on the patio of his Florida club last month, the former president had no chief of staff or senior aide at his side.
There was no scheduler, either, nor a press aide. Only one person staffed Trump at the gathering with antisemites that drew days of denunciations: Walt Nauta, a cook and military valet in the Trump White House who is now employed as an all-purpose gofer for the former presidentand who ushered the group to the table before leaving them alone to talk. Nauta has continued to serve Trump loyallyat Mar-a-Lago, even as he has emerged as a key witness in the Justice Department’s investigation of whether Trump purposely hid classified documents storedat the club from authorities.
TheNov. 22 dinner, described by three people familiar with the event, neatly encapsulates Trump’s post-presidential life — a reminder of how a former president who worked steadily to dismantle the government guardrails imposed by his elected office is now almost entirely without restraint.
From almost the instant it became clear he had lost the 2020 election, Trump refused to accept the results, creating a disorganized transition process during which he rebuffed efforts to prepare for his post-presidency.
In the two years since he left office, Trump has re-created the conditions of his own freewheeling White House — with all of its chaos, norm flouting and catering to his ego — with little regard for the law. With this behavior, Trump prompted a criminal investigation into his post-presidential handling of classified documents to compound the ongoing one into his and his allies’ efforts to overturn the 2020 election results — which presents potential legal peril and risks hobbling his nascent bid to be elected president again in 2024.
Even as he works to convince supporters that the documents probe is the result of an overblown paperwork dispute, and that the FBI’s Aug. 8 search of his Mar-a-Lago Club was an abuse of power, the investigation is in fact a product of how Trump has approached post–presidential life.
What it would take for Trump to be indicted over Mar-a-Lago
The Post’s Perry Stein and Devlin Barrett explain the Justice Department’s probe into former president Donald Trump holding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. (Video: Mahlia Posey/The Washington Post, Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Though few rules guide the life of a former president, Trump has exhibited a characteristic disinterest in following any of them. These days, he is served almost exclusively by sycophants, having replaced successive rounds of loyal yet inexperienced aides with staffers even more beholden and novice.
Natalie Harp, one of Trump’s employees and a former host on the pro-Trump cable network One America News, often accompanies Trump on his daily golf outings, riding the course in a golf cart equipped with a laptop and sometimes a printer to show him uplifting news articles, online posts or other materials.
On some quiet days, another aide, Molly Michael, who served asTrump’s assistant in the White House, has called around to Trump’s network ofallies across the country requesting that they dial the former president to boost his spiritswith positive affirmations. There’s nothing going on, she has told them, adding that his friends know how restless he gets when nothing is going on, according to people who have heard her appeal.
Trump makes an appearance during an election night party at Mar-a-Lago on Nov. 8. (Phelan M. Ebenhack for The Washington Post)
Multiple Trump advisers said there is no senior aide living in Florida full time, with advisers flying in and out as needed. “He needs someone there to say, ‘Here’s a really bad idea, and this is why.’ I don’t think he has that kind of crowd around him right now. Nor does the president want anybody like that,” said David Urban, a longtime Trump adviser turned critic.
Like he did as president, Trump has looked for ways to turn a profit with his new arrangement: Trump’s staff tried, unsuccessfully, to get the General Services Administration to pay rent at Mar-a-Lago — potentially for his lifetime — for the office space he has created for himself above the club’s ballroom.
A longtime Trump confidant termed his Mar-a-Lago existence, where he has tried to re-create the trappings of the presidency, as “sad.” Comparing it to life at the White House, this person added,“It’s like a Barbie Dream House miniature.”
This behind-the-scenesaccount of Trump’s post-presidential life is based on interviews with 23 people, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private details about Trump and his orbit, many of which have not been previously reported.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung responded to questions about this reporting with a statement thatsaid Trump “spent the last two years continuing to build up the MAGA movement and helping elect America First candidates across the country, to the tune of a 98.6% endorsement record in primary elections.”
“There is nobody who has worked harder to advance the conservative movement. After years of biased media coverage and Big Tech meddling in an election to help Joe Biden and the Democrats, President Trump continues to be the single, most dominant force in politics and people— especially unnamed sources who purport to be close to him— should never doubt his ability to win in a decisive and commanding fashion,” he added.
Observers and some Trump allies alike believe that after years of investigations into Trump’s conduct, it is his behavior since leaving office that may be most likely to lead to his criminal indictment — for mishandling classified documents and obstructing the work of federal investigators hunting for those records.
“I think it’s pretty obvious, when there was no around to tell you that, ‘No, Mr. President, you cannot do that,’ it just leads inevitably to this kind of problem,” said Chris Whipple, author of “The Gatekeepers,” a history of White House chiefs of staff.
“In a way it looks almost like the Trump Presidency 2.0,” he said. “Just no guard rails, on steroids.”
Marine One carrying Trump departs from the South Lawn at the White House on Jan. 12, 2021. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
‘Opportunities for messing up’
Trump is hardly the first ex-president to struggle with life as a private citizen after the heady experience of holding the world’s most powerful job. Bill Clinton, for instance, filled hours in his first months after leaving office holed up at home in Chappaqua, N.Y., bingeing TV shows and movies he had missed as president on a TiVo gifted to him by the Hollywood directorSteven Spielberg.
Most former presidents have compensated for the boredom by throwing themselves into the task of crafting a new kind of public life, pursuing charitable goals and managing their legacies through books and the building of a presidential library.
But not Trump. Unwilling to accept the reality of his November 2020 election loss to President Biden, Trump resisted efforts to plan for his post-presidential life, according to people close to him. The result was a delayed, chaotic and little-thought-out process that many around Trump believe set the stage for troubles to come.
In his final weeks in office, White House staffers interested in working for Trump after he stepped down were required to engage in a strange dance in which they competed for post-presidential jobs without admitting there would be no second Trump term — a concession that risked angering the outgoing president and thereby eliminatingthem from consideration. It was all “cloak and daggers,” said one person familiar with the dynamic.
By law, presidents and vice presidents leaving office are together provided up to $2.6 million in public fundsto “wind down” their offices, pay staff salaries, rent office space and buy supplies likecopy paper and pens. Once requested, the money can be accessed for 30 days prior to leaving office and up to six months after.
Documents released by the GSA show that Trump’s White Housechief of staff Mark Meadows did not sign a formal agreement requesting the money until Jan. 11, five days after the attack on the U.S. Capitol and several weeks after funding would have otherwise been available by law.
The delay impacted aides to Vice President Mike Pence, too, who could only then begin to tap the funds and start looking for office space to locate transition offices. Over the frantic days that followed, they selected the 12th floor of a generic-looking office tower managed by the GSA in Crystal City, near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in NorthernVirginia. Not long after, Trump aides contacted Pence’s team, according to a person familiar with the discussions. Though many around Pence believed Trump had endangered the life of his vice president during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, now Trump’s team asked: Could they use the Crystal City space for transition offices as well?
While Meadows signed the GSA document, the work of transitioning Trump to life in Florida actually fell to lower level staffers — including operations aide William “Beau” Harrison, body man Nick Luna and his personal assistant Michael — who held less sway with the outgoing president and knew less about government functions, people familiar with the transition said. Harrison, Luna and Michael declined to comment about their roles in the transition.
All administration documents, which represent the public historical record of a president’s time in office, are required by lawto be sent to the National Archives and Records Administration at the end of the term for safekeeping. Gifts given to the president are also supposed to go to the Archives no later than Inauguration Day,unless the president pays the government an amount equivalent to the item’s appraised value.
Archives officials had been working with a military team since December 2020to pack up and ship documents and gifts from the White House offices to storage in Maryland, with trucks going back and forth on a nearly daily basis until Trump left office on Jan. 20, 2021.But as his remaining days ticked down, they became concerned about boxes of documents that Trump had taken back to the White House residence. Meanwhile, a Jan. 11 email from Harrison to GSA officials shows he anticipated as many as 100 boxes of presidential gifts would be stored at the Crystal City office after Trump left the White House.
People around Trump said they believe the chaotic transition played a key role in Trump’s ability to carry off thousands of government documents to his Florida club. It also meant that the Crystal City office was crammed with leftover stuff from the Trump White House with no apparent organization andlittleknowledge of what was even there.
The emails were released by the GSA on the agency’s website in response to a public records request from Bloomberg News. They track a chaotic effort to move the leftovers of Trump’s concluded term to Florida and frequent confusion over what was owned by the American people and what was owned by Trump.
Workers load boxes of newspapers and other items into a truck on Jan. 14, 2021, six days before Trump moved to Florida. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Workers load boxes with newspapers on a truck. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
A close-up look at some of the boxes. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
In April 2021, a Trump aide emailed a GSA official to ask if the agency’s transition funds could be used to ship an enormousportrait of Trump to Florida. The painting, she explained, weighed 300 pounds and measured 6 by 8 feet in its crate.
“I am so sorry to ask — this is a weird one!” wrote Trump aide Desiree Thompson Sayle. After several days, the GSA official responded that the agency’s lawyers had nixed the request. “Since this is personal property, GSA Transition funds cannot be used for this shipping,” GSA official Kathy Geisler responded. In July, Sayle followed up to explain the team’s resolution for the painting, which was apparently given to Trump after the presidency ended: “We are loading the large portrait received after the 21st on a Penske truck to transport to my house so I can put it on my moving van.” Neither Sayle nor Geisler responded to requests for comment.
Max Stier, the president of the Partnership for Public Service, which assists with transitions, said the process for winding down a presidency can be challenging. But, he added, “it’s a lot harder if you start from the proposition that [the trappings of office] belong to you, than if you start with the proposition that it belongs to the office and to the country.”
“In a complicated process, if you don’t have the right underlying ethos, the opportunities for messing up are much larger,” he said.
As July 2021 drew to a close and Trump staff were losing access to transition funds, the emails show they raced to close down the Crystal City office and ship the remaining items to Florida, where Trump had now established his primary base of operations at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. He was now a Floridian, having changed his voter registration from New York to Florida. Emails show GSA officials rented an 8-by-10-foot storage unit in July 2021 for the former president at a private facility in nearby West Palm Beachand then arranged to ship more than 3,000 pounds of boxes from Virginia to the unit, as well as another nearly 1,500 pounds ofboxes to Mar-a-Lago in September.
The documents show one employee who was listed as a contact for the shipment to the storage unit was Kitty Gubello, a longtime employee of Mar-a-Lago — an example of how thoroughly Trump intermingled his public and private lives. (Asked for comment, Gubello wrote in a text message: “My allegiance is to the club and the family. You will get nothing out of me.”)
Lawyers for Trump found two items with classification markings during a recent search of the storage unit, The Washington Post has reported. The discovery meant the items had likely followed a circuitous path since Trump left office, moving from the White House to Crystal City to theWest Palm Beach unit, spending nearly two years in facilities that lacked security features required for the storage of classified materials.
One person familiar with the Virginia office called it “not especially secure” —the 12th floor of a high rise, where people came and went. Meanwhile, the storage facility, located off a busy interstate in West Palm Beach, lacks visible security guards near the rear entrance. People come and go there as well. Inside are hundreds of numbered storage units with locked metal garage doors. Representatives of the facility did not respond to a request to comment about security measures.
Trump advisers who helped oversee moving the boxes to Mar-a-Lago and the storage facility said there was no cataloguing system or organizational structure to track what ended up where — and the storage room was initially packed.
After transition funding lapses, former presidents are still by law afforded some financial support for the remainder of their lives, including funding for “suitable office space,” as determined by the GSA.
For Trump’s personal use, his young aides spent months redecorating office space located above the 20,000-square-foot ballroom at his Florida club. The former president personally directed the process, choosing the furniture, rugs and paintings, and designating which mementos of his time in office would bedisplayed. Even so, people familiar with the process said aides fretted he would deem the redesigned space insufficient after four years in the Oval Office.
At some point, his aides requested that the GSA formally lease the space from Mar-a-Lago for his use as a post-presidential office — an arrangement that would have directed a stream of taxpayer money back to Trump, potentially for the remainder of his life — a person familiar with the request said. The GSA declined, instead leasing office space in West Palm Beach.
A GSA spokesperson said the agency discussed “a variety of lease options” for Trump’s permanent use, “including the possibility of a lease at Mar-a-Lago.” The spokesperson said the conversations were “preliminary,” did not result in a deal and the agency currently pays no money to Trump-owned properties.
Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s residence and private club, in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 9. (Giorgio Viera/AFP/Getty Images)
‘There are no protocols’
Trump took time to readjust to his post-presidential life. He was surprised by how much his Secret Service detail and motorcade had shrunk. He no longer had use of a major aircraft; Air Force One was unavailable to him, and his company’s TRUMP-emblazoned Boeing 757 was in the shop — repairs that took years, with delays that infuriated him. His living spaces were far smaller than the White House. And he was annoyed that his statements to the press were not getting much attention, four advisers said.
At one point in early 2021, Trump asked a team of advisers if he could summon a press pool — like the contingent of reporters, photographers and videographers who travelwith the president — for an event at his Florida club. But there was no pool on call because he was no longer president.
“We had to explain to him that he didn’t have a group standing around waiting for him anymore,” one former aide said.
Instead, they gathered the few reporters who happened to bereporting in Palm Beach, two people familiar with the matter said.
He was routinely angry, advisers said, about being removed from social media, particularly his beloved Twitter, where his account was suspended two days after Jan. 6, 2021, for risking further violence with his false tweets. His mood was foul for months, as he paid attention to little else thanthe lost election, conspiracy theories to explain away the Jan. 6 attack and mounting legal bills from a rotating cast of attorneys he spoke to daily.
“It was a really dark, dark time,” the aide said, recalling that staff would ask “are you going to set up a library? What’s your post-presidential foundation?”
“He wasn’t interested in any of that at all,” the aide added.
People who know Trump said the need for attention that has been a driving force throughout his life has not dwindled since he left the office that shone on himthe world’s brightest spotlight. That has pushed him to seek adulation from a court of supplicants who pay for access to Trump at his Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster, N.J., clubs, where he has spentmost of his time.
“The appetite for attention hasn’t waned, but that’s where he gets it now,” a Trump confidant said. “The networks don’t carry his rallies. He doesn’t get interviews anymore. He can’t stand under the wing of Air Force One and gaggle [with reporters] for an hour.”
Trumprarely agrees to interviews these days with independent journalists that could become confrontational; several advisers noted he recently granted an interviewwith NewsNation’sMarkie Martin, the sister of his longtime press aide, Margo Martin.
On a typical day since leaving office, advisers said, Trump gets up early, makes phone calls, watches television and reads some newspapers. Then, six days a week, he plays 18 or sometimes 27 holes of golf at one of his courses. After lunch, he changes into a suit from his golf shirt and slacks and shows up in the office above the Mar-a-Lago ballroom or, when he is in New Jersey, a similar office in a cottage near the Bedminster club’s pool.
By evening, Trump emerges for dinner, surrounded most nightsby adoring club members who stand and applaud at his appearance; they stand and applaud again after he finishes his meal andretires for the night. He often orders special meals from the kitchen and spends time curating the music wafting over the crowd, frequently pushing for the volume to be raised or lowered based on his mood. In the Oval Office, Trump had a button he could push to summon an aide to bring him a Diet Coke or snacks. Now, he just yells out commands to whichever employee is in earshot.
Trump pumps his fist to guests during an election night party at Mar-a-Lago on Nov. 8. (Phelan M. Ebenhack/For The Washington Post)
Trump supporters mingle before the former president announces his bid for president in 2024 at Mar-a-Lago on Nov. 15. (Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post)
At times, Trump makes unannounced visits at weddings, gala benefits and other events being hosted by paying customers in Mar-a-Lago’s ballroom, basking as attendees mob him for selfies.He has also attended fundraisers there; many Republican candidates have paid Trump to use his club as a venue at which to raise campaign funds.
“There are no protocols. He plays golf. He meets with people in the afternoon. He really doesn’t do a lot of consequence most days,” one person in his orbit said.
At times, advisers said, he becomes absorbed in his role as the de facto leader of the Republican Party, bringing about $150 million into his main fundraising vehicle and doling out endorsements to reward supporters and punish critics. At others, he appears aimless and rooted in the past, obsessing about an election two years ago and petty slights.
Harp, who has worked for Trump since the spring, offered a different view, writing in an email that the former president is “constantly busy and working.”
“In fact, I can’t believe how much work he is able to get done,” she wrote.
As a private citizen, Trump is far more isolated than he was as president.He makes virtually no public appearances outside of political rallies where he is surrounded by even larger crowds of screaming fans. (Despite declaring his reelection campaign in the Mar-a-Lago ballroom on Nov. 15, he has not emerged from his cocoon for a rally out in the country since then.) He takes no vacations to properties he does not own. He almost never encounters people willing to challenge his behavior — much less true political opponents.
Several people close to Trump said there are only a few people who are willing to deliver bad news left in his orbit, political adviser Susan Wiles chief among them. His circle has shrunken considerably, with many of his longtime allies attempting to avoid dinner invites — and some even weighing roles with other 2024 candidates.
“No one wants to confront him because he can be a beast,” one adviser said. After the dinner with Fuentes and West, who now goes by the name Ye, advisers to Trump were flooded with calls from allies, lawmakers and others questioning the decision and urging him to apologize. Trump received few of them himself, however, people familiar with the matter said.
Some longtime aides are particularly distressed by the influence of Harp, 31, who is rarely absent from his side. She is said to cater attentively to his need for constant praise. While other advisers have urged Trump to vet his statements to the social media platform Truth Social, Harp has been willing to post whatever Trump wantswithout review. She often perches herself right outside his office, two advisers said, and follows Trump around all day,including on the golf course.
“She is indicative of the people around him who just love him,” the adviser said. “Love him too much.”
“Like other staffers, I do spend time with him,” Harp wrote, adding that she has “a great respect” for Trump.
“He is extremely popular with the people,” she wrote. “I see that by being with him.”
Cheung, the Trump spokesman, defended Harp: “Among many other talented members of the team, Natalie is dedicated and loyal and has been invaluable.”
Michael, 30, was also known for her loyalty — both in the White House, where she served as an assistant posted immediately outside the Oval Office, and at Mar-a-Lago in the post-presidency. She had a reputation in the White Housefor always being ready with the answer Trump wanted or the piece of paper he needed. “She just understands how Trump wanted things,” said one former colleague.
Michael left Trump’s employ late this summer, after being questioned by investigators about how Trump handled documents.
One of the only aides who worked for Trump in the White House and still spends significant time in his presence is Nauta, people close to Trump said. A native of Guam, Nauta enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 2001 and was promoted from the White House mess to serve as the president’s valet not long after Trump took office. In that role, he spent all day in and out of the Oval Office, bringing the president glasses of Diet Coke, fetching his coat and moving documents from room to room — duties not unlike those he performs for Trump now that he is out of office. In Trump’s world, where rivalries are common, Nauta is widely liked and perceived as a genuinely nice guy.
Prosecutors have been seeking to secure cooperation from Nauta in the investigation of classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago, people familiar with the case have said. When first questioned by the FBI, they said he denied any knowledge or awareness of sensitive documents at Mar-a-Lago. When questioned a second time, however, he told investigators he moved boxes at Trump’s direction after a grand jury subpoena in May was delivered demanding the return of any documents with classified markings. Nauta is one of several potentially key witnesses whose lawyers’ fees are being paid through Trump’s political action committee, Save America. Some experts have said the arrangement could influence Nauta’s testimony.
Cell phones of supporters capture Trump announcing his bid for president at Mar-a-Lago on Nov. 15. (Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post)
Even when Trump was president, former White Housechief of staff John F. Kelly said senior staff dreaded the time the president spent at the 17-acre club in Palm Beach because he would often return to Washington brimming with off-the-wall ideas planted by Mar-a-Lago members.
“So many of the members knew exactly how to get what they wanted from him. It was all about his vanity,” Kelly said. “It was never good when he was there for long periods of time.”
Now that he is away from the security of the White House, people close to Trump say more random figures around the country have his personal cellphone number and can easily get access to him, particularly if they play to his obsession with false theories that the 2020 election was stolen. As a confidant put it, “Some guy from Arizona is calling and saying, ‘You won’t believe the fraud we saw.’”
Since the November dinner with Ye and Fuentes, advisers have attempted to install a bit more structure, trying to keep a top aide with him at all times and saying they plan to hire more Florida-based staff next year for the campaign. But one former aide said recent events show how security and political protocols have fallen away from Trump, starting in the White House and accelerating in the two years since.
“At first it was: how did Omarosa get in here?” the former aide said, referring to the former reality show star who caused a stir when she briefly was able to secure a White House job early in Trump’s tenure.
“Then it was: What is Sidney Powell doing here?” the former aide said, describing the moment in December 2020 when a group including the lawyer was able to talk their way into an Oval Office meeting with Trump to discuss overturning the election.
“Now it is: What was Nick Fuentes doing having dinner with Trump?” the former aide concluded.
Trump is seen on a Teleprompter glass pane while speaking at a rally in Latrobe, Pa., on Nov. 5. (Shuran Huang for The Washington Post))
‘What happened to the rest of the boxes?’
The May 2021 email from a top official at the National Archives did not initially set off alarm bells for Trump’s team. In the email, the official flagged that some high-profile documents from Trump’s time in office appeared to be missing from the records his team had turned over as he was leaving the White House. “It is absolutely necessary that we obtain and account for all presidential records,” the Archives official wrote.
But for months, Trump resisted the Archives’ request that he return the documents, informing staffers that boxes at Mar-a-Lago contained only news clippings, golf clothes, gifts and nonsensitive documents. What’s more, he argued that anything from his time as president was his to keep. Told by one aide in October 2021 that Archives officials had made a determination that missing records belonged to the American people and needed to be returned to the government, Trump responded, “It’s a bunch of crap,” according to one of his advisers.
Trump agreed to return some of the boxes only after the Archives threatened to notify Congress or the Justice Department. Trump packed the boxes himself, Michael told others. Those offering to help were warned by one of Trump’slawyers, Alex Cannon, that doing so could put them injeopardy, the adviser said.
Finally in December 2021, Trump aides informed the Archives that some notable documents had been located, including correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that Trump had once touted as “love letters.”
The following month, Trump returned 15 boxes to the National Archives. Some of his aides were immediately worried. They knew there had been more than 15 boxes stashed in a storage room in a basement area beneath the public areas of Mar-a-Lago. “What happened to the rest of the boxes?” one lawyer asked others, according to the Trump adviser.
In February, Trump told his team to release a public statement that all materials had been returned, and inform the Archives of the same. His spokesman and lawyer declined, people familiar with the matter said.
The lawyers working on the case — Cannon, former deputy White House counselPat Philbin and others — were soon replaced by a coterie of lawyers who told Trump what he wanted to hear. That group formally included Boris Epshteyn and Evan Corcoran, as well asTom Fitton of Judicial Watch, who played an informal role. Fitton argued that presidents are allowed to deem their records personal, a claim Trump echoed to his lawyers. Fitton declined to comment on his role.
When Archives officials opened the boxes they received from Florida, they soon discovered that some documents inside had markings indicating they were classified at the highest levels. They contacted the FBI. By May, after interviewing Trump aides, authorities were convinced that additional classified records might still be held at Mar-a-Lago and sent a grand jury subpoena seeking their return.
In June, two Trump lawyers met with Justice Department officials and turned over a taped up folder containing 38 documents with classification markings. One of the lawyers, Christina Bobb, also provided a signed statement saying she had been told boxes sent to Florida from the White House had been diligently searched and no other documents with markings were in Trump’s possession.
This image contained in a court filing by the Department of Justice on Aug. 30, and partially redacted by the source, shows a photo of documents seized during the Aug. 8 FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. (AP)
But when the FBI returned in August, this time with a court authorized search warrant, they gathered 103 classified documents, and took an additional 13,000 documents after examining a storage area in the byzantine lower levels of the club and Trump’s office and residence at the club.
The Ye dinner just before Thanksgiving reinforced questions that had already been raised about storing highly sensitive material at the club, which hosts regular public events and where some guests and employees are foreign nationals. National security experts and even some former Trump staff have called the club a counterintelligence headache.
In 2019, for instance, a Chinese national was arrested carrying phones and other electronic devices after getting past a reception area by saying she was headed to the pool. People who have visited the club since Trump left office have said security is even more lax now, with guests often able to access the property without even showing an identification.
Karen Giorno, the former Trump adviser who brought Ye and Fuentes to the club, has told others that she had forgotten her driver’s license when she arrived for dinner and was able to access the property by showing a security guard a bank card with her name on it.
While Trump continues to receive Secret Service protection as a former president, the detail is there to guard him, not provide broader security to the club. When one aide recommended the club subject visitors to more thorough vetting, Trump replied,“The members need to be able to come and go,” according to someone familiar with the exchange. He has told advisers that security is not a problem since everyone visiting the club loves him.
The club, meanwhile, is bordered by residential streets, including one to the north which ends at a gate with only a small sign to warn away trespassers.
Visited on a day late last month — four months after the club was searched by the FBI, and just as scandal was breaking over how easily Ye’s entourage was able to access the facility — there were no security guards at the entry point to the former president’s home.
