"If Mr. Garland does not press charges against him for Jan. 6 or the potential mishandling of classified government documents, Mr. Trump will have learned that becoming president has effectively immunized him from prosecution. That means the country would be facing a potential second term for Mr. Trump in which he is convinced that he can do whatever he wants with complete impunity." - Damon Linker, 'There Is No Happy Ending To America's Trump Problem', NY Times yesterday
In his latest WSJ piece (Let Voters Decide Trump’s Future, Aug. 18, p.A13)Daniel Henninger, aka "Henny", tries to make the case voters need to expel the Turd Trump once again from the political landscape. No, we do not. He was already expelled on Nov. 3rd, 2020. He just never accepted the memo delivered by 80 million plus votes! So why on Earth do we need to replay this BS again? Henny babbles:"The question of whether the U.S. needs a second Trump term has been answered . Thanks to Attorney General Merrick Garland, we’re in it—if by a Trump presidency one means investigations of Donald Trump that go on and on. The first Trump presidency began with the never-ending Russian collusion narrative. Now we have its offspring—the classified-documents narrative.
Well, uh no, bonehead. There is no "insinuation" Trump did something awful, he did something criminal, even traitorous -that in the times of my Revolutionary War ancestors would have earned him a hanging or firing squad. A "serial malefactor"? More like a serial traitor.
As former DOJ lead prosecutor Brandon van Grack pointed out Thursday night (on All In) all the crimes to do with the Mar-a-Lago documents, files are real and have real consequences. Despite your spinning like a top these are crimes Trump will not be able to escape if the DOJ and Garland commits to the law and due diligence. It is not a case of any "political drug" but holding Trump to account. Nor can we permit the fear of blowback and rage from the Trumper Zombie horde to nix any indictment or prosecution of this irredeemable rat. As the NY Times Michelle Goldberg wrote in her recent column ('The Absurd Argument Against Making Trump Obey The Law' ):
"No doubt, Trump’s most inflamed fans might act out in horrifying ways; many are heavily armed and speak lustily about civil war. To let this dictate the workings of justice is to accept an insurrectionists’ veto."
Henny tweaks his twaddle slightly:
'The search warrant approved by U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart lists 'defense information or classified material.' The crude rationale here would be: They wanted the documents out of that room and they got them. It was short on etiquette, but case closed. Let the Trump and government lawyers fight over the classification rules."
Which is more diversionary balderdash, especially being "short on etiquette". This is given - as former DOJ prosecutor Chuck Rosenberg noted (All In, 8/18)- Trump's 4th amendment rights were fully protected and the agents acted with civility and decorum. This was despite the fact Trump crossed a serious criminal threshold under the Espionage Act. That is, the mere retention of highly sensitive documents is a violation - which in this case were related to nuclear weapons and classified SCI (secure compartmentalized). This is all irrespective of classification, given the three possible charges that led to the search warrant have nothing whatever to do with whether the files were declassified. So it's irrelevant to have Trump's lawyers "fighting over" rules for classification. This is also given the Espionage Act takes no notice of any such rules. Trump violated the Act and as former DOJ solicitor general Neal Katyal makes abundantly clear in the clip below, prosecution ought to be a no brainer.:
Neal Katyal: Trump’s declassification defenses won’t hold up in a criminal trial (msnbc.com)
So contrary to Henninger's pro Trump bunkum there is no "crude rationale" here. There is a very solid justification to prosecute Trump to the fullest extent of the laws he violated with impunity. But Henny seems oblivious to this, playing the Trump 'chaos-blowback' card again e.g.
'The U.S. is on edge. At no recent time has its population been more divided or depressed. A Fox News poll reports 75% dissatisfied with the country’s direction, hitting 91% among independent voters. Another Trump investigation, with the likelihood of a conviction years off, will make that worse. Imagine if it goes to court next year or in 2024....The Homeland Security Department this week reported picking up social-media chatter about “civil war.” Metal barricades have been erected around the FBI’s headquarters in Washington. That’s down the street from the new fence in front of the Supreme Court'"
Which indirect warnings and subtle threats also were brayed by one of Trump's goon lawyers last week - warning about "being stupid" going after Trump. But that is irrelevant, given the law and Constitution are on the line here. If Trump is allowed to walk, given a 'get out of jail' card out of fear of the MAGA terrorists' reprisals, then they mean nothing, nada. We could as well join the ranks of banana republics. And besides, as Michelle Goldberg pointed out (ibid.):
"The far right is constantly threatening violence if it doesn’t get its way. Does anyone truly believe that giving in to its blackmail will make it less aggressive?"
But Henny is not one to let it rest, doubling down with his secondary diversion at the end with the suggestion to "let the voters decide Trump's future" i.e.
"A belief
seems to exist in some quarters that the U.S.’s appetite and capacity for
political rancor is limitless. It is not. What may be good for Donald Trump’s
presidential prospects or his cynical adversaries if the Justice Department’s
Mar-a-Lago investigation smolders indefinitely will not be good for a country
already in extremis.
A prudent
attorney general would shut this thing down. Keep the super-secret documents,
stay out of Melania’s closets, give the distressed country a chance to focus on
what matters, which isn’t this."
Let's unpack this BS, which is but a kernel of the seemingly limitless garbage against holding Trump accountable, spouted from the Right's media, e.g. WSJ Troll Holman Jenkins Jr's continued codswallop * about "promoting the hoax of Trump's Russian collusion":
Liz Cheney and Her Unhappy Choice Among Liars
which Mueller's report (Pt. 1) proved was a fact,
As for Henny's concerns regarding "the U.S. appetite for political rancor" - that must be weighed against the U.S. population's capacity for respecting and defending its own laws and Constitution. The central principle at work here is based on the answer to a simple question: Is a former President above the law? The question was fully answered in the Watergate-Nixon era. As a recent NY Times piece observed (8/18):
"After Watergate, Congress had to confront the idea that
presidential records could be criminal evidence. It sought to refute Nixon’s
edict: “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal,” a principle
dear to Mr. Trump’s heart. Congress passed a law, the Presidential Records Act,
to preserve the integrity of Nixon’s White House documents — which by tradition
did, in fact, belong to him — and until now, all who came after him have obeyed
it."
Trump, contrary to Henninger's bollocks, cannot be allowed to be the exception.
Second, given the fact our nation is based on the rule of law and said Constitution, it follows that a prudent attorney general must adhere to those or be deemed irrelevant. If he is not prepared to defend the rule of law and his oath to defend the Constitution then what good is he? Trump is a dirtbag criminal who never should have been elected in the first place. But after having been impeached twice - plus rejected at the polls in 2o2o - he cannot be permitted to resurrect himself again especially after hundreds of voter suppression laws have been put into place.
Damon Linker in his NY Times piece yesterday (see top quote) acknowledges the perilous threat of Trump yet argues that prosecuting him will only feed the political advantage of getting him elected so that: "If Trump is the G.O.P. nominee again in 2024, Democrats will have no choice but to defeat him yet again, hopefully by an even larger margin than they did last time."
No, no and no! This pathological pestilence cannot be allowed to attempt to claim unearned power and validate his insurrection and Big Lie. Especially as his GOP cult has rigged the voting apparatus in numerous states to tilt the scale in favor of an invalid Trump victory. So this half -assed solution is a non-starter. In his misplaced yen for a “Plan B”, Linker sadly ignores the vast blight of the Trump years: the unending chaos, the vile tweets the alienation of allies, the glorification of enemies, the breaking of laws and norms, and the comprehensive loss of America’s moral leadership and direction. He is clearly oblivious to the array of voter suppression laws put into place the last two years which will almost ensure a Trump victory, as well as the elected ancillary laws allowing overturning of voters' will by GOP secretaries of state.
If not hung as the traitor he is, Trump must at least be prosecuted and given the choice: prison for 10+ years or disqualification from any office other than perhaps Port-o-Potty Sanitation Dept.
------
* Given a judge subsequently ruled Trump's then AG Barr misrepresented the facts in his Mueller summary, saying "Trump was exonerated". In fact Mueller made a point of asserting Trump could not be prosecuted (because of existing DOJ policy) but could not be exonerated either. This ambivalence plus Barr's spinning paved the way for the 'Russia Hoax' trope of the Right."
See Also:
by Heather Digby Parton | August 18, 2022 - 8:12am | permalink
And:
by Fred Wertheimer | August 20, 2022 - 6:43am | permalink
Excerpt:
Truth is an alien concept to former President Donald Trump. As the old saying goes, "He lies when the truth will serve."
During Trump's presidency, he made 30,573 false or misleading claims—a stunning average of 21 per day—according to The Washington Post.
Trump is a bald-faced liar. His nonstop lying that the 2020 election was stolen from him is a classic version of the Big Lie made infamous by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
Trump also practices the art of "lie shifting," strategically bouncing from one lie to the next to minimize the ability of the truth to catch up with him.
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