Thief in Chief

It's not just US national secrets documents he's captured...

The artifacts include ancient ceramic candles, which were sent from Israel to the US for a Hanukkah event at the White House attended by Trump, who was then president, Haaretz said.

The candles were meant to be displayed briefly in Washington, DC, but failed to be exhibited due to an unspecified bureaucratic issue, the newspaper reported.

  MSN

That being they were being shipped to Mar-a-Lago?

Israel Hasson, who was the director of the Israeli Antiquities Authority, said they wanted one of their employees to go and pick up the items because they were too delicate to be sent by a regular courier.

"Then COVID broke out, and everything got stuck," he said, per Haaretz.

Officials then asked Saul Fox, a major Jewish-American donor to the Israeli Antiquities Authority, to keep hold of them for a short period until they could be returned to Israel, the newspaper said.

But somehow the antiquities ended up at Mar-a-Lago, where they remain to this day, according to Haaretz.

"Somehow."

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 07/26/2023:

[The artifacts] have been at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s home and private club in Palm Beach, Fla., since December 2021. That’s when Saul Fox, a wealthy donor to both Israel and the Republican Party, gave the items to him during a Hanukkah celebration, calling them an expression of Israel’s gratitude to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Fox, who runs a private equity firm, did not return repeated requests for comment. He told The Wall Street Journal that he had hoped to present the items to Mr. Trump at a White House Hanukkah party in 2019, and was given the approval to do so by Israel Hasson, the head of the Israeli Antiquities Authority at the time, but the State Department insisted on inspecting them first. Th

e delay forced Mr. Fox to send a courier to retrieve the ancient items, and then the pandemic set back his hopes of giving them to Mr. Trump, he told The Journal. So he kept them at his California home.

He finally got the lamps and coins to Mr. Trump at the Hanukkah party at Mar-a-Lago in 2021. Ahead of that visit, Mr. Fox wrote in an email reviewed by The Times that Mr. Hasson said that the new director of the antiquities authority, Eli Eskosido, had “whole-heartedly approved” giving the lamps to Mr. Trump for “permanent exhibition.”

[...]

In a statement, Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman, said the artifacts had been “on loan for permanent exhibition” at the behest of the Israel Antiquities Authority “to honor and celebrate American-Jewish heritage” and Mr. Trump’s close friendship with Israel.

“As the items were displayed as originally intended, the office will be expediting their return to the organization’s representative,” Mr. Cheung said.

The antiquities authority, for its part, said in a statement that it had “no claims against Mr. Donald Trump” and that Israeli and American officials were “working together to return the objects to their proper home.”

  NYT

Any bets on whether they actually get returned?