In the aftermath of Monday’s FBI raid of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, Charles Leerhsen, a former ghostwriter who helped the former President publish a book more than 30 years ago is alleging that the presidential documents and perhaps other collector’s items may have been taken from the White House to sell them for profit.
Well, that kind of sounds like Trump, now doesn’t it?
Leerhsen, a former executive editor at Sports Illustrated who’s also written for Newsweek, RollingStone, Esquire, and The New York Times, alleged this in a Facebook post on Monday, Newsweek [1] reports.
“As a former Trump ghostwriter (mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa) I feel obligated to point out that Trump may have taken documents that he intended to sell as presidential memorabilia,” he wrote.
Leerhsen made the comments soon after FBI agents turned Trump’s Palm Beach home upside-down while he wasn’t there. Trump said the agents also opened a safe.
We don’t as yet know the origin of the search warrant, nor do we know what the FBI agents seized. Some people speculate the raid is tied to potentially classified documents that were removed from the Trump White House, something that was reported earlier in the year.
Leerhsen, in an interview with Newsweek, noted he became pretty familiar with Trump’s fundraising tactics, especially after he entered the political ring. He said Trump has used various money-making ploys and has even resorted to “groveling.”
He admitted that as far as the “documents” he mentioned in his post but speculated that items like pieces of paper Trump may have signed—including apparel like baseball jerseys worn at games—items that may have cash value for collectors because of Trump’s name and popularity (ugh).
“If there’s a grift to be grifted, he’s gonna grift it… He has this very basic sense that he might be able to pawn it off on someone,” Leerhsen told Newsweek.
After Trump’s book The Art of The Deal became a success in 1987, Leerhsen, then a senior writer at Newsweek, worked with him on the follow-up, Surviving At The Top, which was published in 1990, but didn’t have the staying power of the original.
But the experience gave Leerhsen an insight into Trump as a human being.
“I kind of had a firsthand sense of Trump’s avariciousness and his personality,” he said. “Like everyone else, I watched things get worse and spiral out of control.”
Well, we all found out about his avariciousness, greed, cruelty, lack of self-control, and egomaniacal behavior, now didn’t we? If I were Leerhsen, I think I’d be a little embarrassed to mention I worked with the man.