Dem
51
GOP
49
Yesterday was a holiday for government employees, and yet there was a fair bit of news on the Trump legal front. Let's run it down.
The biggest news of the day (perhaps), and the inspiration for the headline, is a new report from The Washington Post. According to the Post's sources, as early as February 2021, federal prosecutor J.P. Cooney and others within the Justice Department were pushing for an investigation of connections between the 1/6 insurrection and Donald Trump/his inside circle. FBI Director Christopher Wray and, once he was on the job, AG Merrick Garland (sworn in on March 11, 2021), both demurred. They feared the appearance of political bias and, despite the fact that Trump had already been impeached for his actions related to the insurrection, insisted that normal order for investigations be observed (i.e., start at the bottom and work up from there). It took a year before the green light was given to DoJ personnel to begin putting Trump and his associates under the microscope.
What this story indicates, of course, is that far from these various investigations being a "witch hunt," the DoJ has bent over backwards to make sure Trump has been treated fairly, arguably to the point of going easier on him than on other suspects. This was always evident to politics-watchers, but now we have rather firm evidence. Of course, it's not going to change the opinion of the Trumpers one bit; they will see the Dear Leader as a martyr regardless of whatever information they receive to the contrary.
Moving on to news specific to the Mar-a-Lago documents case, Special Counsel Jack Smith has the wild idea that Trump, as he flails around wildly and tries to convince people of his innocence, might just share classified information that he's not supposed to share. Who knows where Smith comes up with these things, but in any case, he requested a protective order, which has already been granted by Judge Bruce Reinhart. Not only are Trump, his co-defendant Walt Nauta, and their lawyers forbidden from sharing any documents publicly, but the former president is not allowed to possess any of the classified documents related to the case, and can only examine them under supervision from his lawyers. Undoubtedly, it will be just delightful when Todd Blanche has to say: "Mr. Trump, you can only see that document in the secure room at my office, and with me keeping an eye upon you."
And speaking of the delights of defending Trump, the former president continues to make very public and very admissible statements that undermine whatever defense he might put up. He appeared on Fox for a rather contentious interview with Bret Baier and, as part of the discussion, asserted that he didn't give the classified documents back in a timely manner because "I was very busy" and that "The only way NARA could ever get this stuff, this back, would be 'please, please, please, could we have it back?'"
And over the weekend, Trump uncorked this ALL CAPS tantrum on the same subject:
SO NOW THAT EVERYONE UNDERSTANDS THAT THE PRESIDENTIAL RECORDS ACT. PLUS THE CLINTON SOCKS CASE, TOTALLY EXONERATED ME FROM THE CONTINUING WITCH HUNT BROUGHT ON BY CORRUPT JOE BIDEN. THE DOJ. DERANGED JACK SMITH. AND THEIR RADICAL LEFT. MARXIST THUGS. WHEN ARE THEY GOING TO DROP ALL CHARGES AGAINST ME. APOLOGIZE. AND RETURN EVERYTHING THAT WAS ILLEGALLY TAKEN (FOURTH AMENDMENT) FROM MY HOME? THIS WAS NOTHING OTHER THAN ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!!
The "Clinton socks" thing is the latest angle cooked up by right-wingers to try to justify Trump's actions, so we'll briefly explain what it means for those who are not familiar. While Bill Clinton was president, he sat for numerous interviews with historian Taylor Branch with an eye toward compiling an oral history of his presidency. Clinton kept the tapes of those interviews in the bottom drawer of his dresser, traditionally the place where socks are kept (but hopefully not the place where Socks was kept). Clinton took the tapes with him when he left office; ipso facto, Trump was entitled to take whatever records he wanted when he left office.
There is one small problem with this precedent, however, that Trump and his allies are conveniently forgetting to mention. The Presidential Records Act applies to records produced in a president's (or vice president's) official capacity. If a president writes a poem for the First Lady, or they get a birthday card from their grandchild, or they keep a personal diary, those would be personal and would not be government property. There are gray areas (e.g., a birthday card from a foreign leader), which is why mistakes are made and cleared up each time a president leaves office. But the "Clinton socks" tapes are not in that gray area. In 2010, the conservative activist group Judicial Watch filed suit demanding that Clinton surrender the tapes. And Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that the interviews were indeed personal records, and not subject to the Presidential Records Act. By contrast, there is no world in which the nation's nuclear secrets are a "personal" record, even if Trump turned them into a sonnet and sent that to Melania. (Shall I compare thee to a Korean ICBM? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, but not the three silos in southwest Pyongyang.")
In any event, the upshot is that Trump is making very clear what his state of mind was: He did not have the documents by "accident," and he was not ignorant of the fact that they were in his possession at a non-secure facility. He took them and kept them because he decided he was entitled to them. The problem for the defense is that it's easy to prove that he was not entitled to them, and that he was warned multiple times by NARA and the FBI that was the case. If he disagreed, the correct approach was to go to court and ask a judge to decide. On the other hand, to declare "nuh-uh!" and then hide the documents and lie about it? Not so much.
And to wrap up today's Trump legal report, the second defamation trial instigated by E. Jean Carroll has been put on the federal docket. If the matter is not dispensed with by then, the trial will commence on Jan. 15, 2024. That's about 6 weeks before the Iowa caucuses. Trump is going to be a busy fellow next year, indeed. (Z)