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Opinion: Solving Trump’s victimization puzzle

File photo by Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times / Then-President Donald Trump boards Marine One at the White House in Washington on his last day in office, Jan. 20, 2021. A top Justice Department official told Trump’s lawyers in recent weeks that the department believes he has not returned all the documents he took when he left the White House, according to two people briefed on the matter.
File photo by Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times / Then-President Donald Trump boards Marine One at the White House in Washington on his last day in office, Jan. 20, 2021. A top Justice Department official told Trump’s lawyers in recent weeks that the department believes he has not returned all the documents he took when he left the White House, according to two people briefed on the matter. File photo by Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times / Then-President Donald Trump boards Marine One at the White House in Washington on his last day in office, Jan. 20, 2021. A top Justice Department official told Trump’s lawyers in recent weeks that the department believes he has not returned all the documents he took when he left the White House, according to two people briefed on the matter.

By Martin Schram / Tribune Content Agency 3 min read

Month after month, throughout Donald Trump’s mondo-bizarro post-presidency, our Great News Funnels have spewed out puzzle pieces in the form of breaking news.

They were snippets reporting that our 45th president insisted upon keeping top-secret documents as his personal souvenirs. He repeatedly denied having them — right up until the documents were found and turned over to their proper owner: the U.S. government.

All year, it has been hard as hell for Americans to know for sure who was telling them the truth. So if you tend to reflexively believe your Republican Party leaders, you may have been understandably conned by the torrent of complaints that the FBI acted like Nazi Gestapo in wrongly searching Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, home and office not long ago.

We can finally piece together, in chronological order, those random bits that have spewed out of our news funnels. You’ll be able to see enough of the big picture to enable you to decide for yourself who really deserves the blame for the controversy.

Here we go: