Thread by @ByronYork

DOJ wins daily PR battle with photo of classified documents strewn across floor at Mar-a-Lago. Story is Trump alleged mis-handling of classified documents, and just look at them -- scattered all over the floor! Can you believe it? 1/11

Is that the way the documents were found? Many on Twitter believe so. Representative tweet: 'This is how Trump stored Top Secret material he stole.' 2/11

So question: Is that the way the documents were kept? The DOJ filing refers to Attachment F as 'redacted FBI photograph of certain documents and classified cover sheets recovered from a container in the '45 office.'' 3/11

The layout of the photo does not conform with other descriptions of how the documents were kept -- 'intermixed' and 'commingled' with magazines, photos, print-outs, letters, and other stuff. 4/11

Surely the FBI took photos of the documents as they were found in the container. But what about the photo that was released? How did that come to be taken? 5/11

Now, it's not unusual for law enforcement to release photos of evidence. 6/11

There is the classic shell-casing-on-street photo to show evidence as it was found. Then there are the guns-drugs-and-cash displays at HQ to show evidence recovered from, say, a drug raid. 7/11

But the Mar-a-Lago photo--what NYT calls a 'striking visual aid'--appears to be neither of those. It is not a photo of the classified documents as they were initially discovered by the FBI. Nor is it a display at a DOJ facility. 8/11

Did the FBI remove the documents from the container, spread them out on the floor at Mar-a-Lago, and take the photo? OK. But in selecting the photo to be made public -- wouldn't it have been more informative to see the documents as they were actually kept? 9/11

One Trump antagonist loved DOJ's decision to include photo in filing. 'Very smart. A picture is worth...' tweeted Andrew Weissmann, sometimes known as Mueller's 'pit bull.' 10/11

Of course some will say the styling of the photo doesn't matter. Law enforcement does it all the time! You're just trying to distract from the issue! But the photo is everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. It tells a story. 11/11 End.