By Sid Schwab / Herald columnist
There oughta be a rule: No one expresses an opinion on Trump’s indictment before reading the document (U.S. District Court: tinyurl.com/2see4u). It’s relatively short, and very specific. Trump-world claims it’s no big deal, but the criminality and security risks are clear: what he took, what he did about it, what he tried to do about it.
Same for the Presidential Records Act. Read it (National Archives: tinyurl.com/2viewPRA). It belies everything Trump and the whole lying lot are claiming about his right to have retained the plunderage. Were they to read both, Trumpists would experience reality, possibly for the first time. Then they could make an informed decision whether Trump and his protectors have a) read them, b) read but failed to understand, or c) are deliberately lying, confident of getting away with it because they know their audience. (Correct answer: c)
Nothing they’re spouting about the indictment, the Presidential Records Act, or, for that matter, the equivalence of “but her emails,” is remotely true (HuffPost: tinyurl.com/HRC4u). They don’t care, because they don’t have to. Among the many interviews of save-America Trump supporters, none has said they’ve read the indictment. Not one. And they’re aggressively proud of it. “Why would I read a bunch of liberal lies,” they leer. It’s refractory ignorance, groomed, impenetrable, working exactly as designed.
These facts are indisputable: Trump’s stash included highly sensitive military and other secrets, the revelation of which would be extremely damaging to national security: human intelligence, satellite intelligence, nuclear intelligence. War plans. Even if he’d declassified them, which, by his own recorded admission, he hadn’t, they remained the property of the U.S. government and, out of office, per the PRA, possessing them was illegal.
Again and again, he hid them. He lied. He got others to lie. Trying and failing to get his lawyers to lie, he lied to them, too. The turpitude is stark and undeniable. He’s also lying about President Biden’s “1,850” boxes (CNN: tinyurl.com/1850boxes). Donated to a Delaware college, they’re from his time in the Senate, not covered by the PRA. And, contra the emanations from Trump’s disordered mind, President Biden had the FBI search them for classified content. Twice. To defend Trump is to defend rank criminality. Why?
Realizing Trump was lying about returning them, the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago out of concern that government secrets could fall into the wrong hands. In fact, they had already fallen under wrong eyes: the indictment confirms he showed some to people who had no business seeing them, no security clearance. Including, according to America’s greatest patriot, Kid Rock. Kid Rock. Plus he left them in public locations, access to which was unrestricted. One place gives new meaning to the term “document dump.”
Lindsegrahamic claims notwithstanding, the Espionage Act under which Trump is charged does not require evidence of spying, per se. Its scope includes exactly the unlawful possession and mishandling of classified material in which Trump engaged. Even formerly sycofantastic Attorney General William Barr agrees. Moreover, Trump’s dangerous disregard for national security was a constant throughout his “presidency.” Don’t believe me, just watch: (YouTube: tinyurl.com/danger4u)
What we’ve not heard from the reverential right are convincing explanations or defense of hoarding those secrets. Whatever they were, Trump had plans. Delivering them in return for foreign favors, maybe? Extortion? What might he already have done with them? A few months after Trump left office, the CIA sent a memo to station chiefs around the world, reminding them of increased arrest, exposure, and disappearance of undercover agents (New York Times: tinyurl.com/statewarns). Coincidental timing, probably. Right?
Which is worse, Trump’s crimes or the hingeless, dangerous ways in which he’s being defended, including barely disguised calls for violence by members of Congress? Or the fact that, in the first place, a bereft political party chose as its candidate a man whose sociopathic amorality, dishonesty, law-flouting, tax evasion, fake bone spurs, scams, stiffing of contractors, to list but a few transgressions, were well-known before votes were cast. Indicting a former “president” is unprecedented only because “electing” such an inevitable malefactor was unprecedented.
MAGA Republicans are framing the prosecution of Trump’s criminality as President Biden going after his leading political opponent. In fact, as the indictment makes clear, Trump’s own lawyers provided much of the damning evidence. And, unlike Trump during his tenure, President Biden has maintained the DOJ’s independence from him. People connected to reality understand that a grand jury, not he, heard testimony and rendered the indictment; and that investigating crimes against the state is among the duties of the Department of Justice. It’s why they call it Justice. The only weaponization is the right’s barrage of untruths, penetrating the heart of America.
Bottom line: Trump illegally removed and retained critical government secrets, lied about it and lied some more. Why? People defending him must have answered that question and found it satisfying. That’s the most pertinent “why” of all.
Email Sid Schwab at columnsid@gmail.com.
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