A guide for club members in handling classified material at Trump's Mar-a-Lago | Frank Cerabino

Three recent news items:

News Item No. 1:

The National Archives retrieved 15 boxes of presidential records from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club.

Keeping the boxes of records at Mar-a-Lago violates a law that requires all documents related to a president’s official duties to be kept in government possession.

"As required by the Presidential Records Act the records should have been transferred to NARA from the White House at the end of the Trump Administration in January 2021,” the National Archives and Records Administration said in a prepared statement.

A bite of sour orange: Canadian columnist gets *#$%ing taste of what it's like to hear from Florida readers | Frank Cerabino

In the beginning: Holier-than-thou book banners in Florida ought to start with the Bible | Frank Cerabino

Bending language, bending truth: Let's take the 'legitimate political discourse' of Jan. 6 riot to the Florida level | Frank Cerabino

Some of the items taken to Mar-a-Lago were marked “top secret.”

Trump’s representatives are continuing to search for additional records that belong to the National Archives, the agency said.

White House flushed with secrecy

***

News Item No. 2:

When Trump was president, wads of printed paper were sometimes found clogging the drain in the presidential toilet.

Staffers believed that Trump tore up documents and tried to flush them in his White House toilet, New York Times staffer Maggie Haberman writes in a soon-to-be published book.

***

News item No. 3:

The Landmarks Preservation Committee in the town of Palm Beach recently voted unanimously to allow Trump to build two new bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago.

The 215-square-foot women’s restroom will include four toilets, while the 165-square-foot men’s restroom will have two toilets and three urinals, the Palm Beach Daily News reported.

***

Dear Mar-a-Lago Club member:

We hope you are enjoying your visits to our wonderful Palm Beach club this season.

Some of you have been asking about recent items in the news, and whether you should speak up if you witness anything unusual.

“If you see something, say something,” is generally sound advice. But not at the Mar-a-Lago Club.

Sure, that grinding noise you hear all day sounds more like a paper shredder than a landscaping tool. But it's not for you to say. Be best and just tune it out.

And that Plungers R Us truck parked outside the portico the other day was nothing worth remembering, either.

Buildings of this age routinely experience plumbing issues that have nothing to do with federal crimes.

So we’re just asking you to do your part.

Information gone with a pull of a finger

That means if you discover a toilet in the club is clogged with a soggy ball of paper that appears to be a transcribed conversation with a foreign head of state, you have a clear responsibility to take either these two courses of actions:

Try flushing it down a few more times, or find another toilet.

The good news is that Mar-a-Lago has 33 bathrooms with two more in the works. Just pick one that doesn’t have a shallow pool of water on the floor.

There should be a few left.

Some of you have asked what you should do if your brunch menu appears to be printed on the back side of a document that details troop movements, insurrection instructions from the My Pillow guy or a failed cognitive-function test.

Don’t overreact. It’s not important. Either hand it to the former president while he’s dancing to the YMCA song on the lanai, or dispose of it yourself in the nearest club restroom.

Remember to flush multiple times.

Do you have a story to tell?

We are looking for Palm Beach County residents with a story to share in their own words on the topic of neighbors at a live show June 8. Have an idea? Click here to get more information.

If in your travels on the club property you do encounter a file that appears to be full of sensitive, classified material, please take immediate action: Bring it to the attention of one of the 87 temporary foreign workers who have been requested by the club this season.

These H-2B visa workers are specially trained to handle U.S. top-secret information along with your cocktail-hour drink orders.

In the unlikely event of a multivehicle, unscheduled group visitation outing by men and women in FBI raid jackets, stay calm, remember little and keep in mind that whatever you do, don’t go near the sea wall on the western end of the property.

That’s where the Trump family will be making an immediate, perfectly legitimate, departure via high-speed motorboat.

fcerabino@gannett.com

@FranklyFlorida

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Trump's Mar-a-Lago needs careful handling with toilets and documents