Fox News and guests threw a blizzard of chaff into the air last night to reassure MAGAstan that the 37-count Trump felony indictment was a malicious hit job by the left against the patron saint of kitch. After a few glances, I needed a palate cleanser.
John Pavlovitz regularly reposts some of his sermonettes. One from April he posted last night, “The Conservative War on Everything,” outlines how the conservative project “is a case study in what fear does when it fully grips a group of people.” Their view is as bleak and cold as Trump’s “American carnage.” Their oversized displays of “patriotism” smack of flop-sweat desperation.
I think President Biden is doing an amazing job, but I don't have a flag with his name on it on the back of my car—because he's my president not my savior, and because I'm a rational adult human being who doesn't need a stranger to give me my identity.https://t.co/llQ48a5Rd5
“In this environment,” Pavlovitz wrote, “the human heart become unable to manufacture empathy for the other, as it finds encroaching enemies everywhere it looks.”
The result is a withered soul. Millions of them.
Another post he wrote just days ago, “Woke Will Win,” indirectly lays out the choice America faces: fear or hope.
Yes, the Woke Mob is coming for them: the disparate, sprawling army of human beings who know that diversity makes us better, that compassion is the better path, that more voices make a sweeter sound, that everyone should gave the chance to have joy in this life.
And the bigots and the hate-preachers and the supremacists are right to be afraid of us because we in our “wokeness” are going to make sure that they do not have the final word here.
Kindness is woke. Compassion is woke. Generosity is woke, Love is woke.
At the heart of it all, to those who traffic in this latest war cry, to be woke is to be deeply human.
And that humanity will be the foe they cannot defeat and are right to fear.
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.
Trump took more pains to hide his tax returns than classified info about nuclear weapons.
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.
If the DoJ can indict TRUMP for stealing highly classified documents, storing them all over his social club, keeping dozens of classified docs even after he was subpoenaed, and getting his lawyers to lie to the FBI, YOU COULD BE NEXT
But the whataboutism brought up a case brought by Judicial Watch that I’d forgotten, but the group’s president, Tom Fitten, had not.
I've carefully reviewed the indictment of Trump by his political opponents at the Biden Justice Department. (.@JudicialWatch has nearly 30 years of experience litigating federal and presidential records issues, including the famous "Clinton sock drawer" case.) The document…
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:
Here are Trump’s statements on classified information referenced in the indictment pic.twitter.com/pliBNajMLL
While this relationship may look abnormal and potentially dangerous, the Columbus Zoo introduced a puppy in an effort to calm down one of their rescued cheetahs. The cheetah naturally experienced high stress, and it has found that the… pic.twitter.com/sKirAw3XjC
CHEETAHS AND DOGS WEREN’T ALWAYS friends. And at first glance, the feline-and-canine couple seems an odd pairing—one that turns heads for its cuteness, if not its unconventionality.
But the practice of rearing young cheetahs with a canine companion has become a major means of relaxing the notoriously nervous cats at U.S. zoos from New York to San Diego.
The relationship didn’t begin there, however. Nor, for that matter, did it start on an African wildlife reserve. Captive cheetahs and dogs first became friends in a small town in Oregon.
In 1976, research scientist and conservation biologist Laurie Marker was living in Winston, a town of about 3,000 people. As the curator of a cheetah-breeding program at Wildlife Safari, she found herself hand-rearing a lonely cheetah cub named Khayam.
Cheetahs are companionable litter-mates, but Marker had no other cats to put with Khayam. So she decided to try pairing the fastest land mammal on the planet with the animal typically thought of as a human’s best friend.
And it worked: Khayam and a Lab-mix named Shesho became fast friends.
Raising Khayam with a dog “provided friendship, security, and [helped keep the cheetah] calm,” Marker says in an email. “Companion dogs act as a surrogate for cheetah siblings … It is the friendship between the two individuals that creates a strong bond, and this is what makes for a successful pairing.”
In other words, it chills the cheetah out. Now, when a cub that’s abandoned or orphaned ends up in human care, many zoos pair the cat with a dog as a substitute sibling.
“When I provided the San Diego Zoo with a cheetah named Arusha five years later, I recommended placing a puppy with him,” Marker says. “They did, and the publicity around the cheetah-dog duo made the popularity of companion animals soar.”
There’s no doubt that cheetahs lead stressful lives. Hunted to extinction in India, Israel, and Egypt, there are now fewer than 7,000 of them left worldwide. That’s a drop of more than 90 percent since 1900. And in the wild, only 5 percent of cheetah cubs make it to adulthood, due to lurking lions, hyenas, and poachers, plus the constant threat of not getting another meal.
“The cheetah would rather flee than fight,” says Suzi Rapp, vice president of animal programs at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, which has 16 cheetahs and four companion dogs. “Even though the cheetah has this [incredible] speed, there are predators that are bigger and badder than they are.”
All of which makes the animals nervous, even in captivity.
Dogs, on the other hand, are often mellow. Thousands of years of instinct have been subdued and replaced by thousands of years of domestication. From the historical use of hunting dogs and sled dogs to today’s show dogs and Internet dogs, canines occupy a special place in the human heart. We’ve also taught them to provide furry, drooling therapy for everyone from babies to college students to, evidently, Africa’s rarest big cat.
Captive cheetahs form singular bonds with their companion dogs, which are usually easygoing breeds eager to make new friends. But cheetahs are as fickle as they are fast. “I can always introduce an older dog to a new cheetah, but I can’t introduce an old cheetah to a new dog,” says Rapp.
[…]
The relationship, an adorable example of mutualism, has captivated zoo visitors and clearly benefited the jumpy felines. The cheetahs get a sense of security, and the dogs get a new best friend.
“[Cheetahs are] extremely high-stress animals,” says Roy. “Dogs are everyone’s best friend. Cheetahs soak that in.” So much so, she says, that some are called “the dog of the cat family.”
I’ve seen this in action at the San Diego zoo. We were walking down one of the paths just as the zoo was opening one morning and and walking toward us was two Cheetahs and their companion labs on leashes with their handlers. It was beautiful.
Special Indictment Day Soother Special:
In case y’all doubted me, this guy owns the plaza outside the Miami federal courthouse—at least until the media descends in full force next week for Trump’s arraignment. pic.twitter.com/rTZ13IJuIM
In what is becoming a now all-too-familiar trend, former President Donald Trump’s far-right supporters have threatened civil war after news broke Thursday that the former president was indicted for allegedly taking classified documents from the White House without permission.
“We need to start killing these traitorous fuckstains,” wrote one Trump supporter on The Donald, a rabidly pro-Trump message board that played a key role in planning the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Another user added: “It’s not gonna stop until bodies start stacking up. We are not civilly represented anymore and they’ll come for us next. Some of us, they already have.”
Trump has been indicted on seven counts following an investigation by special counsel Jack Smith into classified documents taken by Trump from the White House in 2021. The indictments have not been released, but Trump’s attorney Jim Trusty told CNN that his client is facing a charge under the Espionage Act, as well as “charges of obstruction of justice, destruction or falsification of records, conspiracy and false statements.”
Trump announced the news himself on Truth Social, writing that he had been indicted in the “Boxes Hoax” case, as he put it, and said he would be arraigned on Tuesday at Florida Southern District Courthouse in Miami. Within minutes, his supporters lit up social media platforms with violent threats and calls for civil war, according to research from VICE News and Advance Democracy, a nonpartisan think tank that tracks online extremism.
Trump supporters are making specific threats too. In one post on The Donald titled, “A little bit about Merrick Garland, his wife, his daughters,” a user shared a link to an article about the attorney general’s children.
Under the post, another user replied: “His children are fair game as far as I’m concerned.”
In a post about the special counsel conducting the probe, one user on The Donald wrote: “Jack Smith should be arrested the minute he steps foot in the red state of Florida.”
In addition to threats of violence against lawmakers and politicians, many were also calling for a civil war.
“Perhaps it’s time for that Civil War that the damn DemoKKKrats have been trying to start for years now,” a member of The Donald wrote. Another, referencing former President Barack Obama and former secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said: “FACT: OUR FOREFATHERS WOULD HAVE HUNG THESE TWO FOR TREASON…”
Others on similar social media platforms made general calls for an armed uprising. “The entire Republican Party should flood the courthouse and demand real justice here,” one supporter wrote on Truth Social. It wasn’t just anonymous users saying this, however: Right-wing talk show host Charlie Kirk called on all Trump supporters to descend on Miami on Tuesday to protest the indictment.
“This is the JFK assassinaton all over again,” right-wing personality and Pizzagate promoter Michael Cernovich wrote, claiming that the “deep state” had killed JFK and were now using the Justice Department to take down Trump.
Other right-wing lawmakers and commentators also pushed the idea that this was a politically-motivated prosecution ordered by Joe Biden. Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy echoed Trump’s own words, calling Thursday “a dark day for the United States of America.” In a statement, he also claimed that Biden was directly behind the indictment of Trump in a bid to remove the leading GOP candidate for the 2024 election.
On right-wing media, hosts echoed the messages posted on social media, boosting the same baseless claims while using war-related language and providing no evidence to back up their allegations.
Fox News host Sean Hannity, for example, told his viewers that the U.S. justice system has “been weaponized beyond belief” and that the country is “in serious trouble,” while former Trump aide Stephen Miller appeared on Fox News and said he hoped the “whole of the Republican party, the whole of the conservative movement, the whole of the country that cares about the rule of law coalesces around President Trump.”
Later, one of Trump’s own lawyers Alina Habba appeared on Fox News and said she was “embarrassed to be a lawyer at this moment. Honestly, I’m ashamed to be a lawyer.”
“It’s the biggest campaign contribution ever, thanks Dims,” one user wrote on The Donald. “This will actually help Trump get re-elected by a wide margin. Then he will go on a rampage. These communists don’t know when to quit,” another wrote.
Alternatively, some even believed that the latest indictments were the result of Trump’s failure to get January 6 prisoners released from jail while they awaited their trial, something the former president has no power over.
“Karma is a bitch isn’t it, you rich fuck asshole,” a 4chan user wrote. “Leaving innocent people to be abused in the DC jail then catch hard time for supporting you on Jan 6th 2021, has consequences.”
And then there’s this member of congress:
Take this seriously. “Perimeter probe”: Higgins thinks indictment precedes bigger attack. “rPOTUS”: “real POTUS,” Trump. “Hold”: “stand back & stand by.” “Buckle up”: prepare for war. “1/50 k”: military scale maps. “Know your bridges”: militia speak for prepare to seize bridges. pic.twitter.com/8wMLQ0AvHA
Classified documents kept in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago
I just read through it quickly and it’s much, much worse than we thought. He had very sensitive documents including war plans and classified info about America’s nuclear arsenal and showed them to people. He kept them in totally insecure locations, including an unlocked bathroom and a ballroom at Mar-a-Lago. When they asked for them back he moved them around, rummaged through them and tried to get his lawyer to lie about what was in them.
A federal indictment unsealed Friday charges former President Donald Trump with 37 felony counts stemming from an investigation into the presence of a trove of classified information at his Florida estate and other locations after he left office.
Prosecutors led by special counsel Jack Smith allege that Trump arranged to remove a massive collection of highly sensitive classified material — much of which consists of intelligence about the “defense and weapons capabilities” of the United States and foreign countries — to his private residence as he left the White House in January 2021.
He had aides stash those records in boxes that also included personal items and ordered them shipped to his estate in Mar-a-Lago at the end of his tenure, according to the indictment. The charging document also says that on at least two occasions, Trump showed classified records to visitors without security clearances at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey — including the map of a military operation to a representative of his political committee.
As the Justice Department began inquiring about the records stashed at Trump’s home, the indictment alleges, Trump ordered an aide — Walt Nauta — to begin moving boxes with classified records to obscure them from investigators. Trump did this without informing his attorney, who was preparing to search Trump’s property in compliance with court-authorized subpoenas to recover the records.
Trump is facing 31 counts of violating the Espionage Act through “willful retention” of classified records and six counts related to his alleged effort to obstruct the investigation. Nauta was also charged with five felonies, including obstruction of justice and making false statements to the FBI.
“We have one set of laws in this country,” said Smith, briefly addressing the media after the unsealing of the indictment. “They apply to everyone.”
The evidence arrayed by the Justice Department paints a devastating picture of an ex-president intent on squirreling away national military secrets at his homes, irrespective of potential consequences. Trump, who took office in 2017 after a campaign in which he lambasted Hillary Clinton for jeopardizing classified information on an unsecured email server, is portrayed as haphazardly stashing documents in different corners of his home — with open access to employees of his club.
At one point in December 2021, Nauta found several boxes toppled in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago storage room, with papers strewn about the floor, including some labeled as “Five Eyes” intelligence — a reference to the group of nations that are most closely allied with the United States and engage in a higher level of intelligence sharing. Nauta took two photos of the spill and shared them with another Trump employee.
If Trump is ultimately tried and convicted on the 37 counts, he faces a potentially lengthy prison term. Each count of willful retention of records carries a maximum 10-year sentence, while the six obstruction charges each carry a 20-year maximum sentence. False statements charges each carry a five-year maximum.
The indictment is Trump’s second in the past three months. He also faces a 34-count indictment in New York for allegedly falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments to a porn star to prevent her from alleging an affair in the final weeks of the 2016 election. And two more criminal probes could result in further charges: a second probe by Smith of Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election and an investigation by Atlanta-area district attorney Fani Willis, also about Trump’s election gambit.
The indictment lists 31 specific documents Trump is accused of intentionally withholding from federal officials after they requested the return of all national security records: 21 of the documents are described as Top Secret, nine as secret and one as lacking any classification marking but involving “military contingency planning of the United States.”
Throughout the indictment, prosecutors emphasize that Trump was aware of the significance of protecting classified information, highlighting statements he made throughout his presidency about the seriousness of upholding laws related to national security secrets. They also repeatedly showed him to be a hands-on manager of the records in question, personally directing the packing and movement of boxes.
And when DOJ came calling to recover them, the indictment notes that Trump — speaking to his attorney — made at least two references to Clinton and her lawyer’s claim that he had deleted her emails before responding to a Justice Department subpoena. Trump’s lawyer, per the indictment, memorialized those exchanges, as well as another in which the lawyer said Trump appeared to instruct him to remove any documents that might be particularly incriminating.
The indictment notes that in June 2022, after Trump orchestrated the last-minute removal of boxes from rooms that DOJ was likely to inquire about, he delayed his trip from Mar-a-Lago to Bedminster in order to greet investigators at his home and pledge to be an “open book.”
Two of Donald Trump’s top lawyers abruptly resigned from his defense team on Friday, just hours after news broke that he and a close aide were indicted on charges related to their handling of classified documents.
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, indicated they would no longer represent Trump in matters being investigated and prosecuted by special counsel Jack Smith, who is probing both the documents matter and efforts by Trump to subvert the 2020 election.
The resignations were shortly followed by an announcement from Trump himself confirming that a close aide, Walt Nauta, had also been indicted by federal prosecutors. Nauta, a Navy veteran, had served as the former president’s personal aide and was a ubiquitous presence during his post White House days.
In their place, Trump indicated that Todd Blanche — an attorney he recently retained to help fight unrelated felony charges brought by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg in April — would lead his legal team, along with a firm to be named later. Trump and his team have liked Blanche, who is expected to play a more elevated, central role.
Though Trump has had shakeups of his legal teams before, the current changes deprive Trump of some of his most seasoned legal hands at the most perilous moment of his legal travails. And it follows the recent departure of a third lawyer who had helped guide Trump’s defense in the documents matter: Tim Parlatore, who cited internal disagreement, particularly with longtime Trump hand Boris Epshteyn, as his reason for abruptly quitting.
One potential silver lining for Trump: The case appears to have been initially directed toward U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who handled his lawsuit last year after the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago estate. Cannon, a Trump appointee to the federal bench, raised eyebrows with her unorthodox rulings sharply in Trump’s favor that were ultimately reversed by a panel of an appeals court.
Two people close to Trump did not dispute that Cannon would potentially oversee the case and said they were pleased by the possibility.
I’m sure this will result in a delay since his new lawyer will have to get up to speed. It won’t be the last one.
By the time you read this, jack Smith may have given his comments. I’ll update here with what he says.
Smith: Today an indictment was unsealed charging Donald J. Trump with felony violations of our national security laws as well as participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice. pic.twitter.com/zJ9ZQ84OtF
Smith: It's very important for me to note that the defendants in this case must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. pic.twitter.com/XzmzbB7o8A
In April, the former president and current candidate for president was indicted by the Manhattan District Attorney on 34 counts of falsifying business records. Last month, he was found guilty in a civil court of sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll. And last night, as expected, he was indicted on federal charges pertaining to the collection of classified documents he refused to give back to the government after departing the White House.
And that’s just for starters.
Trump is still facing a huge civil case in New York over his shady business dealings and he’s under criminal investigations in both state and federal jurisdictions regarding his attempted coup in 2020.
One by one the legal dominoes are finally starting to fall.
These cases are hitting all of Trump’s sweet spots. He was found guilty of his grotesque behavior toward women (which he has bragged about publicly) and he’s going to be tried for paying hush money to women with whom he had affairs. There are literally dozens of women who have credibly accused him of assaulting them and who are now cheering that he’s finally being held liable for it. Now we have the first indictment that pertains to his behavior as a former president who was always planning to run again and his bizarre refusal to return classified documents when the government asked for them back is par for the course.
Trump has acted in inexplicably suspicious and self-defeating ways since he first ran for president in 2016. From calling on Russia to hack his rival’s emails to his strange affinity for the worst dictators on the planet to his pathological lying about everything, Donald Trump has acted in ways that only cult members could excuse as normal.
This Mar-a-Lago case is especially vexing. When he decided to tell the government to go pound sand, he was not some naif who hadn’t been in government before and didn’t know the rules. He’d been president for four years by that time and knew very well that he was not supposed to keep classified documents at his beach club. And if they had been taken by accident in his chaotic move from the White House, he also knew very well that he should just give them back. But he refused, once again raising suspicions that he must be doing something nefarious with them. His behavior ever since then has done nothing to allay those concerns. Again, nobody normal would behave this way.
But that’s Trump. His motives are always self-serving and often just plain dumb but you never know if he’s in it for money or influence or something worse. Whatever his reasons, it’s clear that he has zero respect for the law or the Constitution. He’s gotten away with this stubborn childishness his whole life assuming that nothing could stop him because nothing ever has. He did it as president and was legally protected by a DOJ policy that held that a president couldn’t be indicted and Republican Senate partisans who refused to convict him in two unprecedented congressional impeachments.
But now he’s lost the shield of the presidency that kept him safe for four years and the rule of law is coming for him. If the case is strong (and we don’t know that it is) he could face jail time. The only thing we do know about the indictment at this writing on Thursday night is that there are seven crimes charged. (We don’t know how many counts there might be.) Trump’s lawyer James Trusty appeared on television Thursday and said he had only seen a summary but the language indicates that one of the crimes falls under the Espionage Act and others refer to conspiracy, false statements and obstruction of justice. We’ll have to wait to see exactly what they are charging but these are very serious crimes.
And frankly, it’s even more serious that a former president committed them, not less. We really should be able to hold someone in that position to a higher standard than some faceless bureaucrat, many of whom have landed in jail for far less than what he’s done. It matters that a president would lie to federal law enforcement and crudely obstruct a lawful subpoena. It’s inexcusable for any former high official but for a man who is seeking to become president again, it should be disqualifying.
Unfortunately, none of that is relevant to the Republicans, many of whom were out in force on Thursday night hysterically defending Trump and proclaiming the end of the Republic. It’s really rich to watch a group of people who screeched “lock her up” on repeat for four long years now clutch their pearls over the inhumanity of holding this man accountable for defying the rule of law and claiming that he declassified every document in his possession just by thinking about it.
For a taste of how the right is reacting, take a look at Mark Levin on Fox News:
I think that fairly represents the general tenor of the right wing reaction tonight.
According to Jonathan Swan at the New York Times, the indictment was anticipated by the Trump political team which had a plan ready to go to deploy talking points and fundraising pleas the minute the indictment came down. Like clockwork, they all immediately responded confirming that the party would rally around him as they did after the Manhattan announcement.
Former VP Mike Pence and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley didn’t bother to comment, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said he was waiting to see the actual charges, and the rest (including chief rival Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis) all ranted about the Justice Department (DOJ) being weaponized against Republicans and vowed to end political bias at the DOJ. (They might want to have a word with the accused who spent his entire four years in office demanding that the Justice Department and even foreign leaders take down his political rivals.) The only one with any integrity was former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who said that Trump should drop out, which is correct.
CBS’s Robert Costa tweeted:
Per one seasoned GOP strategist close to one of Trump's biggest rivals: "At the end of the day, this probably plays out like the FBI search but a lot is going to depend on the specifics that come out" in terms of what was compromised, if anything, in terms of nat-sec, sources
That’s a real bunch of heroic patriots, isn’t it? Just the kind of people we all dream of leading the most powerful nation on earth.
And then, of course, there’s the man himself. He was the first to announce that he’d been indicted and rushed to set the narrative before the details are released. In fact, according to Swan, they had it ready to go before the indictment even came down.
“I’m an innocent man. We will prove that again. Seven years of proving it, and here we go again.”
— Donald Trump reacts after he says he was indicted in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case pic.twitter.com/3FbnNK5Az6
Will this end up redounding to Trump’s benefit in the long run? It’s hard to say. The cumulative effect of all these lawsuits and indictments might finally change the dynamic. But in the short run, it’s rallying the Trump faithful and causing the party to coalesce once again around the man whenever anyone attempts to hold him accountable for his many misdeeds. Trump’s greatest asset, perversely, is his bottomless talent for scandal, corruption and crime which inevitably motivated the Republicans to circle the wagons around him. Someday, maybe they’ll figure out that they’d all be better off if they just let him face the consequences. Of course, that would mean they’d be deprived of the fun of joining him in his pity party and since ostentatious whining is their main source of pleasure, I don’t see that happening any time soon.
Move over Samuel Beckett, the GOP is branching out into the theater of the absurd.
If you blinked during Thursday night coverage of the Donald Trump indictment in the classified documents case, you may have missed Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) appearance on “The Ingraham Angle.” While the non-propaganda press ran wall-to-wall coverage of the prosecution of the former president, Fox News worked to keep its audience fixated on the alleged misdeeds of the Joe Biden crime family.
Trump mishandled sensitive documents? “Hold my beer,” says Greene, stepping up to the microphone (Huffington Post):
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) raised eyebrows with a claim she made during a TV interview on Thursday evening.
Greene said she read a document inside a SCIF ― a sensitive compartmented information facility ― related to bribery allegations Republicans have made against President Joe Biden but have yet to provide evidence for.
Greene: The FBI is stonewalling us and they would only let us see it in a scif. What I did after reading the document is made notes when I walked out and went to the table. I wrote down everything that I had just read. pic.twitter.com/NLYVM4Tn8z
“This is a document that all of America should be able to see, but the FBI is stonewalling us and they would only let us see it in a SCIF,” she said. “Well what I did after reading the document is I made notes when I walked out and I went up to the table.”
She held up those notes to the camera.
“I wrote down everything that I had just read so that I could come out and tell the American people what I read,” she said.
The FD-1023 document Greene saw in the SCIF contains unsubstantiated allegations from an anonymous whistleblower regarding the Bidens, bribery, and Burisma, an old hobbyhorse on the right. Transcribing what she read inside the SCIF outside the SCIF sounded to me and others like a confession.
“Revoke her clearance,” tweeted former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger.
The GOP really needs to get people who are better at doing crimes, because this one was like, “HEY, EXCUSE ME, IS THERE A CAMERA I CAN DO THIS CRIME IN FRONT OF, PLEASE?”
Greene’s actions are part of a full-court press by the right to change the subject or to cast aspersions on the Trump indictment.
“Washington and Adams and Jefferson and Hamilton and everyone who came after. Lincoln, everyone who died on the field at gettysburg to save this nation. That is who is being punched in the face” pic.twitter.com/cHYiO6mjk2
“Everyone who died on the field at gettysburg to save this nation”? Confederate soldiers, 28,000 of them, died at Gettysburg — more than a third of Robert E. Lee’s army — in their attempt to destroy the United States of America. That is what the Jan. 6 investigations and recent sedition convictions are about. Trump may yet face indictment over his role in the attempted coup.
Mark Levin was in hysterics last night on Fox after the Trump indictment news and tried to divert attention onto Biden-Burisma as he raved that the federal indictment “is war on Trump, it is war on the Republican Party, and it is a war on the republic!”
The last time I watched Andrew Breitbart rave like that, I thought, “This guy’s going to have a coronary.” He died of heart failure soon after.
The Trumpish right is prepared to go down with the ship.
“It won’t matter. There’s nothing in the Constitution that says [Trump] can’t be president from inside prison. And then once he gets there, he can pardon himself,” said Grant Stinchfield of Real America’s Voice.
Real America’s Voice host Grant Stinchfield: “It won’t matter. There’s nothing in the Constitution that says he can’t be president from inside prison. And then once he gets there, he can pardon himself.” pic.twitter.com/Xs4WKryC7k
These reactions are even more reason to believe that the MAGA-GOP will attempt to win the 2024 elections by any means necessary or, should the votes still not go their way, try to overthrow the republic on their second try.
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
Finally. Special prosecutor Jack Smith indicted former President Donald Trump in Florida Thursday on seven federal counts over his removal, possession, and retention of classified documents. Trump attorney Jim Trusty confirmed that Trump will appear in a Miami federal court Tuesday afternoon for processing.
Trusty told reporters Thursday evening that the summons mentioned the “Espionage Act, multiple false-statement charges and ‘several obstruction-based type charges.’ Specifically, he mentioned Section 1519 (which relates to obstructing an official effort and was widely expected because it was listed on the F.B.I. search warrant affidavit), but also a new one: Section 1512, which criminalizes witness tampering or other means of obstructing an official proceeding.” There may also be a conspiracy count. Charges will be unsealed on Tuesday.
Trusty told Fox News this morning that unlike other presidents Trump is being singled out for having “commingled” personal and government documents upon leaving office (Washington Post):
“For every other president in history, there’s a process of cooperation, a deference to the president to make that first cut — is something presidential or is it personal?” Trusty said. “Here we have a complete weaponization of something that’s never been criminal in history, and it’s a process that frankly is expected to take a long time.”
National defense documents were among those that the FBI discovered in a search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence last summer. The FBI uncovered evidence that Trump had retained and insecurely stored classified documents in addition to those he had already returned to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). After two previous attempts by NARA to retrieve government records, Trump attorneys certified that Trump had returned everything. He had not.
While prosecution of a former president for such actions sets a precedent, such cases are not unprecedented. In February, Chief U.S. District Court Judge J. Michael Seabright of the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii sentenced Asia Janay Lavarello, 32, “to three months of imprisonment and a $5,500 fine for knowingly removing classified information concerning the national defense or foreign relations of the United States and retaining it at an unauthorized location.”
The federal indictments in Florida come two months after a New York state court charged Trump for falsifying documents connected to his hush money payments to a porn star.
Trump’s trial in Manhattan is scheduled to begin March 25, 2024, the middle of the primary season. As for the federal charges, Politico reports:
A federal case might operate on a similar timeline. The lengthy pretrial process allows time for Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors to exchange evidence, file motions and even discuss the unlikely prospect of a plea deal.
It’s always hard to predict how long pretrial matters will take, even in run-of-the-mill criminal trials. Dozens of cases stemming from the Jan. 6 attack on Congress have reached the trial stage in recent months, some of them more than a year after charges were filed.
Trump, historically, has sought to drag out litigation, and he’d have many tools in his arsenal to do so here — from seeking to change venue to fighting to dismiss the case altogether.
But Smith brought these Trump charges in South Florida, a jurisdiction known for its “rocket docket” (ABC News):
Walter Norkin, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of Florida, explains why that might be notable.
“The Southern District of Florida is one of the few districts in the country that operates under a ‘rocket docket’ and, in distinction from the District of Columbia, you can expect a criminal case to be resolved within six months of an indictment issuing,” Norkin told ABC News. “The judges in the Southern District of Florida adhere very strictly to the Speedy Trial clock, which, with limited exceptions, requires trial or conviction to occur within 70 days.”
As a strategic matter, according to Norkin, the special counsel may have chosen this particular venue as a means to circumvent that inclination as prosecutors face the prospect of “certain policy considerations that take effect as an election nears.”
The Associated Press notes “the willingness of GOP voters and party leaders to stick with a now twice-indicted candidate who could face still more charges. And it sets the stage for a sensational trial centered on claims that a man once entrusted to safeguard the nation’s most closely guarded secrets willfully, and illegally, hoarded sensitive national security information.” And twice-impeached, don’t forget.
So far, the GOP is falling in line behind their front-crimer, as Marcy Wheeler displays in a tweet thread:
.@SpeakerMcCarthy sent his support for stealing classified documents out from his official account, which FEELS like an illegal campaign donation. pic.twitter.com/DmeMnKTRvV
Beyond this point, more Trump indictments could come thick and fast. Fulton County, Ga. District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to issue indictments this summer to Trump and others over interference in the 2020 election there. Smith’s investigation into Trump’s participation in the Jan. 6 coup plot may yet yield charges.
Throw in the smoke from wildfires in Canada and elsewhere and we may have to redefine “long, hot summer.”
