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Friday, June 9th, 2023

Second Trump indictment lands, this one from federal charges filed by special counsel

Don­ald Trump has been indicted!

It’s a relief to be able to type those words for a sec­ond time, because it sig­ni­fies that we are still — at least for now — a coun­try where the rule of law means some­thing. Where treach­ery and egre­gious crim­i­nal behav­ior have con­se­quences. And where the pow­er­ful and enti­tled can’t expect to evade accountability.

The indict­ment, charged by a grand jury in Flori­da, con­sists of thir­ty-eight counts brought against Trump and a min­ion, Wal­tine Nauta:

  • Counts 1–31 allege that the defen­dants engaged in the ille­gal, will­ful reten­tion of nation­al defense infor­ma­tion, a vio­la­tion of (18 U.S.C. 793(e).
  • Count 32 alleges a Con­spir­a­cy to Obstruct Jus­tice, (18 U.S.C. § 1512(k)
  • Count 33 alleges that a doc­u­ment or record was ille­gal­ly with­held, in vio­la­tion of (18 U.S.C. 1512(b)(2)(A), 2)
  • Count 34 alleges that the defen­dants cor­rupt­ly con­cealed a doc­u­ment or record, a vio­la­tion of (18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(c)(1),2)
  • Count 35 alleges that the defen­dants know­ing­ly con­cealed a doc­u­ment in a fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion (18 U.S.C. §§ 1519, 2)
  • Count 36 alleges a scheme to con­ceal in vio­la­tion of (18 U.S.C. 1001(a)(1),2)
  • Count 37 alleges false state­ments and rep­re­sen­ta­tions, in vio­la­tion of (18 U.S.C. §§ 1001(a)(2),2)
  • Count 38 alleges more false state­ments and rep­re­sen­ta­tions, in vio­la­tion of (18 U.S.C. § 1001(a) (2))

The indict­ment charges that Trump unlaw­ful­ly took and retained clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion that did not belong to him after exit­ing the White House.

“The clas­si­fied doc­u­ments Trump stored in his box­es includ­ed infor­ma­tion regard­ing defense and weapons capa­bil­i­ties of both the Unit­ed States and for­eign coun­tries; Unit­ed States nuclear pro­grams; poten­tial vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of the Unit­ed States and its allies to mil­i­tary attack; and plans for pos­si­ble retal­i­a­tion in response to for­eign attack. The unau­tho­rized dis­clo­sure of these clas­si­fied doc­u­ments could put at risk the nation­al secu­ri­ty of the Unit­ed States, for­eign rela­tions, the safe­ty of the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary, and human sources and the con­tin­ued via­bil­i­ty of sen­si­tive intel­li­gence col­lec­tion meth­ods,” it says.

After it was dis­cov­ered that Trump had stolen clas­si­fied mate­ri­als, he lied about his actions and obstruct­ed the fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s efforts to recov­er the doc­u­ments, because he did­n’t want to give them back.

Trump endeav­ored to obstruct the inves­ti­ga­tion, the indict­ment says, by:

  • sug­gest­ing that his attor­ney false­ly rep­re­sent to the FBI and grand jury that
    Trump did not have doc­u­ments called for by the grand jury subpoena;
  • direct­ing defen­dant Wal­tine Nau­ta to move box­es of doc­u­ments to
    con­ceal them from Trump’s attor­ney, the FBI, and the grand jury;
  • sug­gest­ing that his attor­ney hide or destroy doc­u­ments called for by the
    grand jury subpoena;
  • pro­vid­ing to the FBI and grand jury just some of the doc­u­ments called for by the grand jury sub­poe­na, while claim­ing that he was coop­er­at­ing fully;
  • and caus­ing a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to be sub­mit­ted to the FBI and grand jury falsely
    rep­re­sent­ing that all doc­u­ments called for by the grand jury sub­poe­na had
    been pro­duced while know­ing that, in fact, not all such doc­u­ments had
    been produced.

Remem­ber how Repub­li­cans end­less­ly yelped about Hillary Clin­ton’s email serv­er and argued she should be in prison? Clin­ton’s con­duct was­n’t crim­i­nal, and this con­duct clear­ly is, yet we’re hear­ing very few Repub­li­cans con­demn it. That’s because of the IOKIYAR prin­ci­ple: It’s Okay If You’re A Repub­li­can.

It was okay for Trump to bla­tant­ly, fla­grant­ly vio­late our coun­ty’s laws and then lie about it, because he can do no wrong. Remem­ber when Nixon said, It’s okay if the Pres­i­dent does it? Stick the word Repub­li­can in there and you’ve basi­cal­ly got the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s view­point on this sit­u­a­tion. It would not be okay for a Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dent to take clas­si­fied mate­r­i­al to his home, even inad­ver­tent­ly, as Pres­i­dent Joe Biden has dis­closed doing. But it was okay for Trump to. Trump gets a pass. In fact, Kevin McCarthy is even pledg­ing to run inter­fer­ence for him!

The evi­dence in this case is rock sol­id. Spe­cial Coun­sel Jack Smith has dot­ted all of his i’s and crossed all of his t’s. Trump is still enti­tled to the pre­sump­tion of inno­cence like any oth­er Amer­i­can — a right we all enjoy that Trump has failed to respect in the past — but we see no dif­fi­cul­ties for the gov­ern­ment in prov­ing its case. It seems very open and shut. And giv­en that Trump is a patho­log­i­cal liar, his protes­ta­tions about this being a witch hunt and per­se­cu­tion are not credible.

Impor­tant­ly, the indict­ment holds Trump account­able for his own bro­ken promis­es con­cern­ing the respect and rev­er­ence of clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion, by call­ing atten­tion to many of the occa­sions when Trump spoke about the topic:

As a can­di­date for Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, Trump made the fol­low­ing pub­lic state­ments, among oth­ers, about clas­si­fied information:

a. On August 18, 2016, Trump stat­ed, “In my admin­is­tra­tion I’m going to enforce all laws con­cern­ing the pro­tec­tion of clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion. No one will be above the law.”

b. On Sep­tem­ber 6, 2016, Trump stat­ed, “We also need to fight this bat­tle by col­lect­ing intel­li­gence and then pro­tect­ing, pro­tect­ing our clas­si­fied secrets. We can’t have some­one in the Oval Office who does­n’t under­stand the mean­ing of the word con­fi­den­tial or classified.”

c. On Sep­tem­ber 7, 2016 , Trump stat­ed, “[O]ne of the first things we must do is to enforce all clas­si­fi­ca­tion rules and to enforce all laws relat­ing to the han­dling of clas­si­fied information.”

d. On Sep­tem­ber 19, 2016, Trump stat­ed, “We also need the best pro­tec­tion of clas­si­fied information.”

e. On Novem­ber 3, 2016, Trump stat­ed, “Ser­vice mem­bers here in North Car­oli­na have risked their lives to acquire clas­si­fied intel­li­gence to pro­tect our country.”

You can read the full indict­ment here:

JUN23-Trump-Indict­ment

More indict­ments are like­ly com­ing. Trump may, by the end of this year, be defend­ing him­self against four sets of crim­i­nal charges in dif­fer­ent juris­dic­tions. All while he’s run­ning for the high­est office in the land. Again.

That’s some­thing he should have been barred from doing by Con­gress, but Mitch McConnell and his Repub­li­can cau­cus refused to have the decen­cy or the sense to put coun­try above par­ty and con­vict Trump of the charges the House impeached him on like they should have — even in the wake of the Jan­u­ary 6th insur­rec­tion. That mas­sive error in judg­ment will go down near the top of the list of the many bad deci­sions McConnell has made that have hurt this country.

Trump is expect­ed to be arraigned on Tues­day in Mia­mi. He seems to be pin­ing for a repeat of Jan­u­ary 6th, but the FBI, Secret Ser­vice, and local police will be work­ing togeth­er to min­i­mize the pos­si­bil­i­ty of vio­lent conduct.

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