Disinformation, slippery slopes and whataboutism
The Department of Justice released the indictments in the Trump documents case Friday afternoon and it was much worse (and far more detailed) than many commentators anticipated. It included 37 felony counts in all against Trump for national security violations and obstruction of justice. The bathroom photo (above) became instantly iconic.
Pages 28-33 of the indictment reveal that documents found at Mar-a-Lago contained national defense, foreign intelligence, and U.S. nuclear secrets. From the indictment:
The Mar-a-Lago Club was an active social club, which, between January 2021 and August 2022, hosted events for tens of thousands of members and guests. After TRUMP’s presidency, The Mar-a-Lago Club was not an authorized location for the storage, possession, review, display, or discussion of classified documents. Nevertheless, TRUMP stored his boxes containing classified documents in various locations at The Mar-a-Lago Club—including in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room.
Soon after the release, Special Counsel Jack Smith delivered a brief statement.
“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,” Smith began.
“The men and women of the United States intelligence community and our armed forces dedicate their lives to protecting our nation and its people. Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States and they must be enforced. Violations of those laws put our country at risk,” Smith added. “We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone.”
Readers will not be surprised that urging viewers and partisans to read the document in full for understanding was not on the agenda at Fox News and among Trump’s supporters and sycophants. But disinformation, slippery slopes and whataboutism were.
First, the disinformation story line on the right is that Joe Biden did this! He weaponized the Department of Justice to target his principle rival in the 2024 election. What they won’t remind their audience is what Smith said, “This indictment was voted by a grand jury of citizens in the Southern District of Florida.” Smith presented the evidence. The citizen grand jury found a there there.
Knowing well the conservative base, the right-wing propagandist’s next order of business is to personalize the threat. We’re on a slippery slope! “If they can indict a former president,” we’ve become a banana republic. You could be next!
Judd Legum satirized that predictable response:
But the whataboutism brought up a case brought by Judicial Watch that I’d forgotten, but the group’s president, Tom Fitten, had not.
Jesse Watters of Fox News led with the “Clinton sock drawer” story line Friday night.
“If you believe the most ardent defenders of newly indicted former president Donald Trump, there’s a silver bullet hiding in Bill Clinton’s sock drawer,” Alison Frankel writes for Reuters:
The reference to Clinton’s socks, which has cropped up not just in the former president’s Truth Social feed and at conservative news outlets but even in Trump court filings, stems from a 13-year-old case in which the right-leaning nonprofit Judicial Watch sought access to 79 audio tape recordings of Clinton interviews conducted by the historian Taylor Branch while Clinton was in office.
During his presidency, according to GQ magazine in a 2009 Q&A with Branch, Clinton “squirreled away the cassettes in his sock drawer.” But for Trump’s purposes, what matters is Clinton’s handling of the tapes after he left office: Clinton designated the recordings as personal records, not official presidential records, that were therefore not required to be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration under the Presidential Records Act.
[…]
“The [Presidential Records Act] does not confer any mandatory or even discretional authority on the archivist,” wrote U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in that 2012 ruling. “Under the statute, this responsibility is left solely to the president.”
That language, as I’ll explain, has emboldened Trump supporters who contend that under Jackson’s analysis, the Justice Department had no authority to seize documents from Mar-a-Lago.
Ergo, if Bill Clinton could do it, Donald Trump had plenary authority to designate anything he removed from the White House as personal, Watters asserted. This was not the right’s position when “the Clintons returned the $28,000 worth of furnishings to the National Park Service,” items intended as gifts for the White House that the Clintons mistook as personal gifts.
What NARA wanted returned were not gifts to the White House, nor to the president, nor tapes “in the nature of a diary or journal in recorded form,” but U.S. government records, highly classified records.
Frankel concludes:
That argument could have political salience among Trump backers asserting that the Justice Department has been “weaponized” to pursue the former president. But as a matter of law, said professor Margaret Kwoka of Ohio State University, Jackson’s ruling in the Judicial Watch case isn’t going to be much help for Trump. “These are completely different kinds of records,” she said. “And there are different legal obligations when it comes to the handling of classified records.”
In other words, for a former president accused of repeatedly violating the Espionage Act, the sock drawer case is probably more of a red herring than a silver bullet.
The Trump indictment confirms as much, featuring direct quotes from Trump that he knew the records were classified, that he had no power to declassify them, and referencing Trump’s own quotes from the campaign on the sensitive nature of national security secrets.
There are receipts: