Trump Rages and Partisan Angst Soars Court matters cloud any 2024 campaign planning
Espionage charges leveled against former president Donald Trump for illegally possessing classified documents demonstrate the law and order approach to misdeeds in government.
At the same time, this ignites partisanship and unquestioning loyalty, proving politicians are so afraid of their voters that honesty is impossible.
If you have spent six years believing in Donald Trump as a national leader, you should be angry, not with this development but with yourself, for missing the reality of how Trump behaves and believes.
In his short statement, Jack Smith, the Justice Department's special prosecutor, reminded the nation that the classified documents case was hardly an error of record keeping. The 49-page Indictment summarizes what Smith's team discovered: "This indictment was voted by a grand jury of citizens in the Southern District of Florida, and I invite everyone to read it in full to understand the scope and the gravity of the crimes charged."
Notwithstanding a conviction and possible prison sentence, Trump may remain eligible for MAGA Republicans to support in a 2024 election. The reality is anyone can try to be president of the USA.
Investigating the case of the documents with a Florida Grand Jury was a surprise. Smith, a veteran prosecutor, was not interested in repeating the mistakes of the Mueller Probe in 2016. That probe found connections between Russian agents and the Trump campaign, but the report was legally complex and then defenestrated by Trump's Attorney General William Barr.
At his first political rally after the Indictment announcement, a defiant Trump told the crowd, "I shall never be detained." Bravado is never in short supply with Trump because this is the first of several cases the special prosecutor is likely to bring against Trump:
-
He demands to change vote totals in Georgia.
-
His Participation in organizing an insurrection on January 6.
-
His role in creating fake electoral college results.
Trump has flooded the Internet with outrage on social media because the Indictment rests on espionage act violations, which sounds terrible and has harsh penalties of prison time. Republicans invested in a partisan campaign to keep their leader out of jail, and have screamed about how unfair this prosecution is for classified documents.
Oh my, how weird since I remember Trump at a campaign rally in 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina, saying, "In my administration, I'm going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law." A month earlier, he tweeted this: @realDonaldTrump— Crooked Hillary Clinton and her team "were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information. Not fit!"
Examples of Trump doing his "Lock her up" schtick reinforce that candidate Trump knew how somebody must handle classified documents.
Trump was not surprised on June 8 by the Indictment. He received a "target letter" from Special Counsel Smith on May 19, reacting on his Truth Social website the next day. "TRUMP Hating Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, whose family and friends are Big Time Haters also, will be working overtime on this treasonous quest," he said, referring to Democrats supposedly stepping up their "fake investigations."
In lockstep, Republicans in political positions prepared to be "shocked" at a government response to Trump stealing and then refusing to return classified documents. Partisanship demands a suspension of intellectual honesty and decency.
This Indictment reads like a crime short story about a gang that couldn't shoot straight. It uses Trump's words to show he wanted everyone to know he had these classified documents. In two separate anecdotes, Trump boasts to random lay people that he has secret military information, then shares some of that information with them.
Considering the public nature of Mar-a-Lago, leaving classified documents stored in unlocked spaces is indefensible. Trump's year of stone-walling requests for the return led the FBI to search Mar-a-Lago, discovering classified documents, including those in Trump's office.
A court ruling had negated client-lawyer privilege, so several of his lawyers testified to the grand jury. They related how Trump asked them to conspire with him to deceive the government. Once they explained this, they wisely quit working for Trump since lawyers can lose their licenses for criminal conspiracy with clients. Escaping Trump were Jim Trusty and John Rowley, who helmed Trump's Washington, D.C.-based legal team for months and were seen frequently at the federal courthouse.
Their cooperation has influenced Trump's efforts to get ahead of the bad news on Thursday night. His aide, Walt Nauta, has also been indicted by federal prosecutors. A Navy veteran, Nauta was a ubiquitous presence during Trump's post-White House days.
Has Trump finally run out of escapes after a lifetime of breaking the rules and flaunting the law? His lack of honesty has never been in question. He comes across as an insecure braggart in the Indictment, a man desperate to cling to his status after an embarrassing fall from power. Six business bankruptcies should have prepared him for this. But his cavalier attitude about taking classified material will play a decisive role in the outcome of this case. A conviction based on harsh facts will be unacceptable to his political supporters. A six-year political nightmare is not over.
Winning reelection in 2024 is vital as it provides two essentials he seeks: a Get out of Jail card as president and the ability to use the US government for retribution against those who recognized him for what he most certainly is: an angry 77- year -old duffer who lies about his golf scores and who has led a charmed life claiming success while deceiving banks and governments for decades. His supporters claim that it is all a witch-hunt staged by the Biden Administration to keep him from running in 2024.
The apparent thoroughness of this probe by Special Prosecutor Smith is in stark contrast to sham probes done by federal authorities on behalf of Trump's various Supreme Court appointments while he was in the White House.
Donald Trump has for decades consistently managed to get in front of negative news about his behavior, enabled by media reluctance to call him out for blatant lies and misrepresentations. The Republican establishment of politicians and right-wing media backed him, knowing he was a fraud because voters of a particular disposition applauded. Having the White House as a pulpit enhanced his control of the narrative. However, his behavior during the January 6 Capitol insurrection reduced what credibility he had outside the MAGA supporters.
His supporters believe that the 45th president of the USA is a hero fighting for them. Few have read the Indictment, while most will ignore it. Trump's s rage aims at harvesting millions of dollars from small donors. Federally required fundraising data indicates that big businesses and rich donors are, for the most part, sitting on their wallets.
Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN were at warp speed covering the story. However, all the guests on Fox supported the theory that this was a deep-state conspiracy against Trump. Tuesday's court appearance in Miami likely will be a scrimmage between supporters and people who believe equal treatment under the law is the American way. Expect a super concentrated effort to keep demonstrations under control.
The Indictment by a federal grand jury represents an extraordinary moment in the legal and political history of the United States, one that carries as much risk to the Justice Department and, by implication, to the administration of President Biden as it does to Trump.
An angry Trump gets the last word here.
"What the radical Left and the Deep State are doing – this backward INDICTMENT – is not about truth or justice. It's about FEAR. The fear that if you stand in the way of their Marxist agenda, then YOU could be INDICTED, ARRESTED, or IMPRISONED for your beliefs. The fear that if you give the forgotten, hardworking men and women of this country a voice, then YOU could be made their public enemy #1."
This is consistent with the response to previous impeachment efforts with Trump. "We're gonna continue to see this rally around the flag effect," said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist, and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, commenting after the Indictment was unsealed. He expects no candidate except for former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to take up the details of the Indictment as a cudgel against Trump. "They're all complicit now," Madrid said.
By Kenneth Tiven