What in the wide world of fuck?!? This is too dumb to be real, yet here we are:
CNN — An employee at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence drained the resort’s swimming pool last October and ended up flooding a room where computer servers containing surveillance video logs were kept, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
While it’s unclear if the room was intentionally flooded or if it happened by mistake, the incident occurred amid a series of events that federal prosecutors found suspicious.
At least one witness has been asked by prosecutors about the flooded server room as part of the federal investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents, according to one of the sources.
The flood allegedly happened a couple of months after the feds retrieved a cache of classified documents when they executed a warrant at Trump’s Florida dump. It sounds like maybe some people cited damaged servers as a reason they couldn’t comply with DOJ requests to view video surveillance footage showing how the purloined papers were moved around the property, whereas other employees testified that no IT assets were compromised in the pool mishap.
I don’t know what’s going to happen with this investigation, but I’m beginning to think Trump’s gargantuan stupidity will make it impossible for the DOJ not to indict him. What would he have done differently if his goal was to overcome any vestigial institutional resistance to the idea that a former POTUS should be charged with a crime? The mind reels.
Open thread.
Musical Chairs (Attorney Style)
trollhattan
I blame the Falwell Jr’s pool boy.
Baud
Reminds me of the time I inadvertently flushed my cocaine stock down the toilet.
WaterGirl
I was listening to Lawfare LIVE event about the special counsel investigations on YouTube when this news broke. One of the presenters read parts of the story LIVE, and she couldn’t stop laughing at the absurdity – someone actually thought “hey if we flood this room, they won’t find the videos of our crimes, and they will think it was an accident”.
Narrator: There’s no way this was “an accident”.
Baud
If Ivana’s grave ends up flooded, it could give people the impression that Trump is not being forthright.
WaterGirl
@Baud: That turned out to be really lucky for you, because you couldn’t have known the feds were at the door, about to serve you with a warrant to search your place.
Luckiest guy alive, I tell you!
MisterDancer
I’ve worked in server rooms, both in high-rises and below street level.
My mind cannot wrap itself around how you accidentally drain a pool and have it flood a server room. Maybe — MAYBE — if other rooms were flooded along the way? The article does not seem to say. Otherwise, for water to go from pool right into a server room — a room usually designed to be more secure than the average room in your facility — just…whew, childe.
JaySinWA
@Baud: Water tables gota table. OTOH a floating coffin might be just the ticket.
Betty Cracker
Most buildings in Florida do not have basements because if you dig a hole, it immediately fills with water. So was it an above ground pool?
Baud
@MisterDancer: Maybe the server room was underneath the pool to protect against spies that are afraid of water.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Photo of pool.
JaySinWA
@MisterDancer: Hey, Mr. T’s construction shortcuts were legendary back in the day IIRC.
Steeplejack
Nicholle Wallace just announced that Jack Smith was in the meeting with Trump’s lawyers at DOJ today.
Mai Naem mobile
Isn’t there a decent chance the surveillance was on cloud anyway? And while it appears that some of the secret service was corrupted by TFG, wouldn’t the secret service have some involvement in surveillance of TFG’s papers? TFG really comes across like a 6-7 year old boy who thinks he can get away by stating some easily proveable lie.
mrmoshpotato
You mean you’re not supposed to drain your pool into your IT rooms?!
Don’t I feel stupid!
cain
@WaterGirl: As we both know – offsite copies are a thing.
WaterGirl
@MisterDancer: We actually did have our server room flood. The entire department was located in the basement. Some huge pipe broke on a Saturday morning and the entire hallway was flooded, with water rushing down the hallway.
Water was coming into our office and the adjoining server room – luckily one of us was working on a Saturday and called in the cavalry. So all of us were there, shoving towels under all the doors and taping this off. When it go really bad, one of the guys had to climb out the window and go home for his wet vac. We saved everything, but it was quite an adventure.
But I digress. Back to this bullshit story – who the fuck locates a server room next to a fucking pool. And there’s no way that draining the pool could flood a server room – not unless they installed a pipe to drain the pool directly into the server.
These guys are like the keystone cops.
smith
Well, it sort of worked for Nixon and the 18 minute gap in what was undoubtedly a smoking gun that could have promoted him from unindicted co-conspirator to indicted co-conspirator.
On the other hand, the increasing absurdity of Trump & Co’s attempts at obstruction suggest that his bombshells are even worse than whatever it was that Rosemary Wood erased.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I snorted! It’s a good thing I wasn’t eating or drinking when I clicked that.
Chetan Murthy
I gotta wonder: disk drives have decent seals, right? They’re not air-tight, but still, I wonder if the drives were actually damaged. And even if they were, gotta believe that you can recover data a lot of the time. And SSDs? Those ought to be even more durable.
But haha, I’m sure the fucking traitors immediately took all that equipment and had it crushed.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: That was in the NYT article I block quoted in the previous thread.
Yes, Jack Smith was there. No, Merrick Garland was not there. Nor was Garland’s second in command.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@WaterGirl: I believe the Javits Center (in NYC, by the Hudson River) once had a server room flood. It was in the basement. After the disaster they moved it upstairs.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I laughed when I read the original post. These clowns are so ridiculous.
WaterGirl
@cain: Yes! Belts and suspenders.
JaySinWA
@mrmoshpotato:
We have to dump the data somewhere.
I know, dump it in the pool. No wait, reverse that.
karen marie
I went to google maps to look at the location of the pool in relation to buildings. Meh.
Then, for shits and giggles, I followed the street-view around the property. A whole bunch of large-ish trees have been cut down alongside the surrounding walls. The wall itself is in pretty shitty condition. What caught my attention though is the multiple identical signs warning that no firearms or weapons of any kind are allowed on the property.
Huh. And here I thought Trump was a gun rights guy.
mrmoshpotato
@MisterDancer: “Can you reroute the pool drainage right into our server room? In case we ever want to play a practical joke on ourselves?”
trollhattan
They looked at the siting of those Fukushima backup generators and decided “That’s for us, that’s how to do it!”
trollhattan
@mrmoshpotato:
“It was too much hair in the filters.”
Dangerman
Pool Cleaner wasn’t named Rosemary Woods was it?
This ties into a deep philosophical question i’m pondering. I’m doing a 5k Mud Run on Saturday. My mudders got tossed in a Spring Cleaning. But I have the opportunity to buy a pair from Goodwill that will be worn once because they will be trashed. Orange is the principal color.
Now, ordinarily, I’d lop of a finger before wearing orange but this somehow is appealling. Is it too juvenile or infantile to trash something just because it’s orange. I kinda feel ashamed.
JaySinWA
@WaterGirl: I’ve seen a version of this movie before:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ozYlgOuYis
Computer nerd heats pool with computer servers.
bbleh
Now look, what lavishly faux-gilt, ludicrously overpriced Florida mansion-turned-club doesn’t make the occasional mistake of connecting pool drains to an IT server room? It’s entirely understandable! Be reasonable, people!
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
18 1/2 gallon gap
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
Sorr-ree! Like I read the post. I get all my news from cable TV.
Ruckus
I always thought he is one dumb MF but him trying to say that everyone he hires is dumber than he is?
How does this dipshit remember to unzip/zip his pants, or does he just piss on himself?
Is it possible that a human can actually breathe if their IQ is in the low 2 digit range, like under 50?
I mean how could it be measured if the person is too dumb to take the test?
Ryan
Of course the pool drains into the server room! What is the matter with you conspiracy theorists?
citizen dave
I saw Foghorn Leghorn on a YouTube one night and ever since there has been a growing thing in me to (re) watch a bunch of them. I hope somehow that Foghorn Leghorn will be included on trump’s legal team. Here’s a quote from him, and a link (though I notice address says “not secure”) to many quotes:
“He’s so dumb he thinks a Mexican border pays rent”
http://foghornleghornquotes.com/foghorn-leghorn-sayings/
Tony Jay
I’m going to spend my last years on Earth wandering the post-apocalyptic wilderness of Grey Bitten teaching little mutant kids the story of Felonious T Preznut, the marmalade coloured troll who tried to steal the Merry Car keys from Smiling Bran-Bid-Den, only to get whacked upside, downside and roughly across the backside by the magical fold-up chair of Indicto Mento, the greatest Lucha Libre in the history of Mexi-wrestling.
Obviously I’ll edit out the sex stuff. Those kids will have enough to worry about without bad dreams of angry little toads getting washed away by the storm.
gene108
I thought the Feds already had video of Trump’s valet moving boxes around?
Whatever Trump & Co. tried to do last fall clearly isn’t going entirely to plan, since videos clearly survived this Biblical flood.
MattF
Just coincidental that Ivana was buried in a bathing suit.
sdhays
Just wait, they’ll later realize that all of the video was automatically uploaded to the cloud anyway and records to decision to
destroy evidencedrain the pool. Trump will be seen holding up a piece of paper to the camera with “Eduardo, go drain the pool into the server room to destroy the evidence of my major crimes” in sharpie.Robmassing
I think it’s just a lie dreamed up in haste by some very dumb people.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
These guys are like the keystone cops.
The keystone cops were smarter. Not by a lot mind you but then they didn’t have to be a lot smarter to not be considered fucking idiots.
JML
I’m trying to imagine what the reaction would be from right-wing media if Hillary had a similar incident related to her private server.
As a general rule I think incompetence is more likely than intentional malfeasance. (This is what I usually tell my union brethren when talking about our HR department: it’s more likely they’re idiots than overtly evil.) But damn if I wouldn’t immediately do a deep dive on the pool boy’s finances…
JaySinWA
@Ruckus:
Come on man, there are products for that
https://www.cvs.com/shop/depend-real-fit-incontinence-underwear-for-men-maximum-absorbency-grey-prodid-2790004
MisterDancer
@WaterGirl: Yep, that flooding tale makes sense — there’s other rooms impacted, clear cause, etc.
Again, additional info may make it make sense. But I ain’t holding my breath for that.
sab
@WaterGirl: Very old resort that drains its pools every autumn. Of course they hired a new inexperienced pool guy who didn’t know how to drain pools…
ETA Or the usual pool guy they have had for years called in sick and they had someone else on staff do it because it was scheduled to be done…
How often do Trump Resorts accidentally flood their security tape rooms…
Every time the boss is facing indictments.
Well then that’s okay. Usual procedures of the enterprise. Nothing to see here.
Ruckus
@Ruckus:
Also, the Keystone cops were acting that stupid.
SFB is not acting in any way, shape or form. He really is exactly what you see.
And he proves it every day.
JaySinWA
@sab: Where are the Watergate plumbers when you need them?
I think I just figured out the G Gordon Liddy reference in the Lawfare video previous.
Quinerly
@Baud:
Reminds of the story about Keith Richards flushing his stash when someone said the police were at the door.
Sting, Stewart Copeland, and Andy Summers were dropping by for a visit.
Ruckus
@JaySinWA:
That’s not a diaper, that’s really him in those tennis shorts.
JPL
@mrmoshpotato: Apparently it went like this .. We need to drain the pool, btw where is the surveillance equpment stored? ….
zhena gogolia
@trollhattan: FTW!
Jo Jo las Orejas
@Baud:
Tengo esa piscina exacta.
JPL
@WaterGirl: After they are convicted, they will ask to be sent to a mental health facility in order to treat their criminal addiction.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: It was like that conference room Curt Jürgens has in The Spy Who Loved Me, where you can push the button and send your minions down to be eaten by sharks. (Parodied by Dr. Evil, I believe.)
Baud
@Jo Jo las Orejas:
Es util para cuando necesites destruir evidencia del delito.
Quinerly
@Ruckus:
Sometimes I just lose track of all the shit.
Every bit of this document stuff is self inflicted.
zhena gogolia
@Dangerman: It’s the color of the anti-gun movement, so there’s that.
zeecube
@Baud: “cat pool”, heh.
cain
@Ruckus:
Well, to frank he is a convicted sexual predator so he probably doesn’t zip his pants at all.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Who among us hasn’t drained a bath tub and flooded a wall mounted microwave
narya
@Dangerman: There’s a thing going around about wearing orange to protest gun violence, so they could serve two purposes . . .
sab
@Baud: I disbelieve you. Trump doesn’t like huskies.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Quinerly: Exactly! All Trump had to do was give the docs back, and that would have been the end of it. But he couldn’t do that. Because he’s Trump
zhena gogolia
@MattF: lol
tam1MI
The Atlantic has an article about Chris Licht’s disastrous tenure at CNN. You’ll read the whole thing going “What an asshole”.
Alison Rose
Sure, I believe them. Thousands wouldn’t.
Jo Jo las Orejas
@Baud:
Mi mamá no me deja delinquir. Soy un chico muy bueno.
sab
@Baud: This blog has been very good for my Spanish. 58 years of rust being polished away. Don’t tell el perro that I cannot understand every word.
Baud
@Jo Jo las Orejas:
Tú nunca robarías los documentos secretos del gobierno.
prostratedragon
@Chetan Murthy: Somewhere down in the CNN story they note that no machinery actually was damaged — which makes the whole thing seem even lamer in my opinion.
Quinerly
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
It’s like something you can’t make up. If in a novel, you wouldn’t believe it.
Don’t get me wrong…I want him tried, convicted, jailed…but of all of the criming he has done…it still amazes me if he goes down for the docs…how every bit is self inflicted.
RandomMonster
Pretty sure I read last year that the FBI had already secured offsite footage from the company that manages security surveillance at Merde-a-Lardo.
Jo Jo las Orejas
@Baud:
Robo golosinas de pavo caras. No le digas a mi mamá.
Ken
The only thing remotely plausible about this story was that it happened in 2022. You know, before the siphon bug was fixed.
sab
@tam1MI: He was considered a genius even though he failed with Scarborough until they went to morning, softened it and added Brezinski to sigh mournfully whenever Joe went RWNJ.
He went to Colbert whose career took off when rival Jimmy Fallon sucked up to Trump so people changed channels. Nothing to do with Chris Licht.
He has landed on his feet a lot and everyone decided he was a genius, not lucky. Maybe next time listen to your staff. They fawn with the best of them, but not over a cliff like mythical lemmings. (BTW real lemmings don’t do that unless terrified by camera crews.)1
JPL
@Quinerly: Earlier I read that Petraeus admitted guilt to sharing classified information and received a slap on the wrist and 12months probation.
trump can’t admit guilt.
Baud
@Jo Jo las Orejas:
Creo que ella sabe.
coin operated
I once got to work on a medical imaging archive system that the hospital stuffed into a basement closet. Said closet was right underneath the main sewage pipe for the hospital and it sprung a big damn leak. Going into that nasty mess required full hazmat PPE.
Sharing this story to show that it’s entirely possible some idiot would locate the resort computer room directly under that pool drain.
sab
@coin operated: They don’t drain the sewage pipe every Fall for as long as the hospital has been built. Resorts do drain their pools every year, and Mar a Lago is an old experienced resort.
Miss Bianca
@JML:
You are, eh? *gnashes teeth*
Actually, I do wish HRC *would* tweet something snarky about it, just as another sop to my outraged feelings about that whole episode.
Ken
I can only imagine how they’d try to retrieve and/or destroy it. Something like that scene in Zoolander where the two male models are sent to get the computer files, but stupider.
Miss Bianca
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
LOL!
Miss Bianca
@sab: The Husky *is* the pool boy. If you can believe that, then you can absolutely believe the bit about draining the pool into the server room. That’s the kind of hijinks a Husky would think was hi-larious!
smith
It’s entirely possible that he didn’t give them back because he couldn’t; they’d already been passed to third parties.
There was a story at Dailykos pointing out that a picture that was released showing the covers of classified documents discovered at MAL actually depicted photocopies of those covers. Why would they have been photocopied (a crime in and of itself, I believe)? Maybe the originals had been sold?
Ruckus
@Quinerly:
His entire life has been self inflicted.
He just shared his infliction with us for 4 yrs. OK shared is doing a hell of a lot of work there. It’s more like he inflicted the entire country. And look how many people have acquired SFB disease, I mean this has to be a medical disaster that more than 2 humans think he’s the smart one. Isn’t his nickname Maxwell Dumbass?
SpaceUnit
Trump probably ordered his personal pilot to take the plane up and look for that cloud.
Ruckus
@smith:
Maybe the originals had been sold?
I believe that Maybe is doing more work than all the people building the pyramids added together.
Elizabelle
@Baud: You have me laughing.
That is one happy water dog, though.
Miss Bianca
@tam1MI: Not just “what an asshole” but “what a fucking DELUSIONAL asshole”.
ETA: And the guy who wrote that article? No better than his subject. FFS.
Redshift
@Betty Cracker:
Earlier news reports about the documents talked about a basement storage room where the boxes of (paper!) documents were kept, and that was my exact reaction. A basement? In Florida?
zhena gogolia
e-mail has not been working all day. I wonder if it’s Putin.
Soprano2
These writers are terrible! This is not believable at all! Who writes this crap, anyway?
I’m waiting while hubby gets his MRI. We got lucky, after calling the doctor’s office 3 weeks in a row there was a cancellation so he could get in. Now if we can just get the neuro-psych appointment…I don’t want to know, but I need to know what’s wrong.
VOR
30 years ago we had a customer in Chicago who had a data center room in the sub-basement. There was a flood of several buildings in the Loop, including their building. The customer’s system was completely submerged. Fortunately they had done a clean shut-down and power-off before the flood. Once the building was drained, they carefully let the equipment dry for a couple weeks. Their system started right back up with no data loss.
eversor
As a current worker of and runner of server rooms this is not possible unless you wanted it to happen. They are on higher levels and not exposed to this sort of risks. They also have have drains, water pumps, cooling systems, and on and on.
This doesn’t cover your joke ass home server nonsense but at the professional level this can’t happen short of earth quake or tsunami.
Then there is the fact that proper servering requires backups made that are transported off site so as not to lose it. This is done via online transfers, pulling drives, and even still magnetic tape. Nothing should ever “be lost”. If it was, that’s someones ass.
@Chetan Murthy:
Not how these work at all. Hard drives can’t be air tight because they need to let air, and heat, out. Bulk data is still stored on these because SSDs suck donkey dick at it. The seals, as they exist, are sort of iffy and are meant to prevent junk from getting in between the platters in normal operation. It’s not going to stop a flood.
SSDs are even more of an issue as it’s easier to destroy. In a nut shell it’s easier to destroy a NAND chip than it is an HDD platter. That’s why security systems still write to HDDs, not SSDs. SSDs are used for fast compute jobs. HDDs are used to store stuff that’s critical. This gets confused as most “consumers” use joke laptops that have an SSD and then… that’s it. Where professional workstations and servers will have an NVME SSD as the OS and work drive, a SATA SSD as a quick storage drive, and then multiple SATA or SAS HDDs as storage drives in redundant backup… probably backed up to a DAS (direct attached storage) over intel thunderbolt or generic USBC, or a NAS (network attached storage over ethernet to a server). It’s easier to recover platters than dead NAND.
A professional security system is, to be simple about it, a bunch of POE (power over ethernet) based IP cameras that’s hitting a server which is writing to a NAS and a DAS at the same time. The DAS is so you can pull it and give it to someone, it’s the last say few days or so of stuff. The NAS is long term storage and this is backed up via an online service as well as writing to tape for cold storage.
None of this situation passes the smell test to those who work in IT. When you do encounter someone who wants a sort of closed no-backups system you instantly know it’s not on the up and up. Which is to say, I’m guessing there were things on those drives not related to documents he doesn’t want let out.
It begs the question, what else is on those drives? It’s a giant red fucking flag. And unless those disk platters were pulverized and then fed into an incerator (which is SOP for certain items) it can be brought back.
Redshift
@sdhays: Takes me back to Iran-Contra, when the Ollie North’s conspirators thought they were being clever and deleted all the incriminating messages and documents from the fancy IBM office system. However, the system did automatic backups, and when investigators marched in they were able to quickly pull them, much to the horror of the guilty parties.
sab
Toggle eversor #95 out of pie on this one.
Soprano2
@coin operated: Maybe the hospital was built before there were computers there, and no one thought about that pipe being there. Lots of places crammed that stuff wherever they had some space, because there was no place designated for it. Sounds horrendous to me.
japa21
@sab:
Thinking same thing. People didn’t believe me last night when I said he (I think) can have very important things to say.
Redshift
I recall an incident at a company I worked at back in the 90s. We were on the top floor, not the basement, and during a very heavy rain, the roof leaked and flooded the server room. Fortunately it had a raised floor, and no very expensive computers were damaged, but I still remember my boss pulling up a floor tile and seeing network cables floating. And thinnet Ethernet was robust enough that the network was still working.
sab
If you have eversol pied you might want to untoggle the pie for #95. Well worth reading.
Cameron
Let he who has not drowned a server cast the first hamberder.
dm
Back when computers were expensive one of our projects was renting time from a timeshare service that discovered several inches of water beneath the false floor one day. I think they were pulling up the floor tiles to run cables for a new machine when they found it.
NotMax
@Redshift
Marjorie Merriweather Post could have afforded to build a basement in the Everglades had she a mind to do so.
prostratedragon
@VOR: Several buildings! Flair for understatement you have. When I was in town a month later things were still fairly soggy downtown.
JaneE
I am so old a server room is just another name for the computer room, and I really have trouble imagining how this could happen.
Mar-a-Lago should have drained the pool at least once before now. I find it hard to believe that a blockage or a broken pipe would have gone unnoticed in a well maintained resort. Whether MAL is well maintained is a question.
Out here we have lots of pools, and all of them I know about drain into the main sewer lines.
I hope they have documented the damage to all the other rooms that had to be impacted. A flood of just the room with the evidence just doesn’t cut it.
prostratedragon
@sab: How did you know?
JaneE
@Redshift: Back in the 70’s we pulled up our raised floor to see the cables floating. We did not know where the water was coming from. Or how long it had been like that, since pulling up the floor was not a common thing. We got the day off while maintenance handled it. It took 3 days before we got to go back to work normally.
tokyokie
@smith: You made a Rosemary Woods reference before I could. Maybe her son is in the Florida pool business these days.
NotMax
Pools rush in where agents dare to tread.
//
JaneE
This is Mar-a-Lago. Trump probably gave him a medal.
For some types of business you don’t want any records.
Scout211
Reading the news report, did anyone else think, this smells like the Calamaris? I know that the report is pointing to the pool guy but that seems super far-fetched that the pool guy would be the brains behind this.
sab
@prostratedragon: Years ago there was an epic comment battle on BJ where one of the contestants had pied the other. So the battle was one sided because the other contestant didn’t know it was on.
The genius of the BJ pie toggle. I toggle everyone anyway.
eversor is often right, but that is just my perspective.
Citizen Alan
@zhena gogolia: That was Blofeld in You Only Live Twice, I believe. Curt Jurgens had a long table with a 30-foot-long speargun hidden underneath. Which was extra ridiculous because you had to make certain the guy you wanted to execute sat in the right chair.
Obligatory Mitchell & Webb.
smith
One thing will be made clear from the upcoming indictments: Just how far loyalty to TFG reaches down the ranks. There will undoubtedly be numerous people who will have flipped, up and down the line. Can’t imagine the pool boy, for instance, willing to cover for the big guy at the potential cost of a felony for himself. I guess that’s the problem with conspiracies that require some heavy manual labor. Too many little people involved with too little stake in upholding the cause.
Urza
Just going to state professionally that unless those drives were set on fire or fully degaussed that data is recoverable if someone wants to make the effort. Can put holes in a spinning platter and still get back most of it if you have the willpower to go a bit at a time. If Cloud companies can do it for customer data then the FBI or NSA can certainly do it for a traitor to the nation.
Redshift
@NotMax: I’m not arguing she couldn’t afford it, just that it’s hard to imagine it not flooding all the time. That’s the whole reason buildings in Florida aren’t built that way.
Of course, it seems all too likely she paid whatever was required to keep the water out of the basement and TFG was too cheap to maintain it.
Scout211
Apparently, the equipment wasn’t damaged. But the DOJ is still investigating possible obstruction. Who was the person or persons who thought up this crazy scheme?
From the CNN article: Link
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@MisterDancer: Accidentally ran the hose down the stairs, halfway down a 100-foot hallway and (after accidentally sending an employee out to Home Depot for more hose) accidentally the rest of the way down the hallway and accidentally through the door of the server room, that somebody had accidentally propped open.
Hoodie
@Redshift: Checked it out and, yes, there is a basement in Mar-a-Lago, along with a tunnel that connects the main building to the beach. Evidently, the storage rooms where the documents were stored are also in this basement. The thing must be encased in concrete and have some sort of pumping system. That said, it would be idiotic to have your server room down there given that the water table may be 15 feet or less below the land surface and you’re only a few hundred yards from the open Atlantic. Then again, this is Trump.
tam1MI
The blessings of being a mediocre white male.
bbleh
@Scout211: the pool-guy is the fall-guy. Some news report also had it that he was the guy helping Nauta shift boxes. My guess would be Nauta found someone ambitious enough to be flattered and naive enough to do the boss’s dirty work.
kalakal
I don’t know what the fuss is about.
TFG heard about computers using water cooling systems and demanded the bigliest and best. Yoooge even. An entire swimming pool.
Once I stop laughing.
There is no way the servers were in a basement room, looking at the aerial shots that’s an in ground pool, not on a built up platform. Any basement would be below sea level, the place is on the Florida coast.
Any pump would be lifting the water up out of the pool to the filter system which will be hidden in one of the rooms in the structure around it. Should the filter system spring a leak it would flood the floor of that room and drain out in the surrounding area. max depth 1 – 2 inches. If the server room was next door and without a raised floor then at worst you get a soggy floor. Hard to see how it would reach a hard drive on a table orin a cabinet.
Most South Florida houses have floors a few inches up at least, we get really heavy rainstorms, a few inches in a day is not unusual. The only way this flooded the server room is if someone ran a hose deliberately into the room and held it high enough to 8mpact the hard drives
smith
Aren’t there still some segments of video inexplicably missing? The flood story may have been cooked up to account for that, but then, oops, there’s still no good explanation for those gaps.
cain
@eversor: It was probably half hearted attempted because that equipment is not cheap and I can’t imagine that Trump would want to replace all that equipment. The man is a cheapskate through and through.
cain
If it is anything like server rooms I used to work in – you don’t want that flooded. It’s super dangerous with all that equipment – electrical fire being one of them. You’d run the risk of all kinds of shit. Insurance would probably destroy you if you were negligent.
patrick II
@Redshift:
A basement in Florida — one block off of the beach?
Jinchi
@patrick II: Sounds almost like it was designed to be flooded.
RepubAnon
Why do we not put server rooms in the basement, asked the BOFH
Matt McIrvin
Namor the Sub-Mariner, if you’re listening…
Splitting Image
I’m suddenly reminded of Doonsebury chronicling the adventures of the Keating Five back in the early ’90s. Mark Slackmeyer wonders aloud how five senators are going to explain a clandestine meeting with a lobbyist.
SENATOR: We could say we were meeting for bridge.
SECOND SENATOR: Five of us?
Next day showed the Senate hearing.
SENATOR: We were meeting for bridge.
COMMITTEE CHAIR: Five of you?
prostratedragon
@sab: That’s funny. Actually I don’t often pie, and even when I do, will sometimes toggle out of curiousity. It was a good, useful comment you referred to.
prostratedragon
@Redshift: I wonder if that’s one reason the federal gov declined the donation of the place by the Hutton sisters. The reason given at the time was very high operating costs.
ljdramone
Marjorie Merriweather Post built three bomb shelters under Mar-a-Lago in the 1950s, says the Palm Beach Post.
One of them was apparently the “basement storage room” where the FBI found classified documents during their raid.
Gvg
Only reason i know of for basements in Florida were bomb shelters from the 50’s and 60’s. Was Marjorie rich enough to have one of those? Still don’t believe this story
Someone beat me.
kalakal
@ljdramone:
I sit corrected.
Must cost a fortune to keep them maintained so they stay dry.
Is TFG the sort of person to keep up the maintenance I ask myself.
I still can’t imagine someone building a bomb shelter with the swimming pool drain running into it
The only basement i know in Florida is at Ca’ d’Zan, John Ringlings mansion ( now part of the Ringling Museum)* but the whole place is built up on a platform.
I didn’t think of bomb shelters
*well worth a visit
prostratedragon
@Gvg: Widow of C.W. Post as in cereal, who then married E.F. Hutton as in New York Stock Exchange and with him turned the company into General Foods. TFG wishes he were as genuinely rich as she was.
WaterGirl
@sdhays: I love that image.
Racer X
Just had to stop by and give a big thumbs up for the phrase: “gargantuan stupidity”.