Justice or Injustice?

The news this week is sure to be dominated by the federal indictment and arraignment of Donald Trump.

It is an unprecedented event in that no former President or current candidate for President of the United States has ever been charged with a crime.

I am not sure anyone knows where this leads.

Is this the beginning of the end for Trump?

Or will it conclude in the federal government deep state being found to have overreached with a selective prosecution motivated by animus towards Trump rather than by legitimate concerns about the mishandling of classified documents?

I predicted soon after Trump left office in 2021 that the Democrats and D.C. establishment would do everything that they could to see to it that Trump could not return to the Presidency in 2024. 

There is little question that the Democrats are going to turn over every rock and throw everything they can at Trump and his family the next few years  They clearly live in fear of the man. They may get something that sticks and get people to believe that it is more than political retribution. If they do, Trump will not be viable in 2024 as his political brand will be permanently damaged. Once you lose trust you don't get it back.

That prediction has proven prescient.

What is surprising to me is, despite the fact that the Democrats have been calling Trump a crook or someone who has been involved in nefarious business activities for years, they have not turned up anything of substance on him.

This included two failed impeachments which were also unprecedented.

This gives further perspective as to how much the Democrats and Establishment despise and fear Donald Trump.

It is important to take account of this context when considering the legitimacy of these charges.

I read the 44-page indictment and, as with any charging document that only contains the prosecutor's views without any defense or rebuttal perspective, it does not look good for Trump.

Can he mount a sound defense to the charges that will be heard in a trial in South Florida?

We will see.

What seems clear in reading the facts submitted in the indictment is that Trump was not eager to turn over certain confidential documents he had accumulated during his time as President.

He was slow walking the return of some of these documents and/or potentially not willing to return others.

What was his motivation?

In reading the indictment it is easy to see how Trump could have simply avoided all of this if he had merely turned over everything when it was requested. First by the National Archives and later by an FBI subpoena of the records,

Therefore, it is hard to argue this is not a self-inflicted wound. It is almost as if Trump set himself up for this.

Was it merely hubris and stupidity?

Hubris might have played a role. It was not stupidity.

Despite what Democrats like to claim, Donald Trump is not stupid.

He is both crafty and calculating. He does talk big and is prone to making grandiose claims but that is almost always a negotiation ploy of some type. The decisions he makes are almost always soundly based, practical and logical.

The indictment document indicates that when Trump was talking with his attorneys about how to respond to the FBI subpoena he referred to the similar situation when Hillary Clinton's emails as Secretary of State were being sought. These were housed on a private server in a closet in her home in direct contravention of any protocols and laws for a federal employee with access to classified information.

That is the same server in which BleachBit was first used to wipe the hard drive clean and then hammered into a million pieces. 

When some 30,000 emails were recovered Trump asked how was it that her attorneys could delete all of her emails after saying that they reviewed them and found nothing of significance much beyond hair appointments and wedding plans for her daughter.

Did the FBI or Justice Department consider that obstruction of justice?

Despite the fact that a lot of Hillary's confidential emails ended up on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, it still did not result in a charge of mishandling classified documents against her.

In fact, FBI Director James Comey said that any reasonable prosecutor would not prosecute that case.

I also found it interesting that the indictment cited testimony from Trump's attorneys.

I wondered how that was possible considering that the attorney-client privilege is one of the most sacrosanct principles in American jurisprudence.

It turns out that the Justice Department got a judge (Obama appointee to D.C.) to rule to compel Trump's attorneys to testify to the grand jury based on a rare and limited exception to the attorney-client privilege referred to as the crime-fraud exception. This piercing of the privilege is only used if it is believed that the conversations with counsel were in furtherance of a crime itself. In other words, attorneys were involved in furthering the crimes alleged here according to the argument made to the judge.

I just don't see compelling evidence of that in the indictment. It appeared that Trump's attorneys were doing everything they could to comply with the production of the documents in good faith working with Trump.

Did anyone try to pierce the attorney-privilege with Hillary's handing of her documents? 

There is no doubt that Trump believed, rightly or wrongly. he was being singled out.

And why wouldn't he?

Trump had to endure an endless series of attacks from the moment he announced he was running for President.

His entire Administration was consumed by claims of a fake Russian collusion story.

This leads to my guess as to why he resisted turning over the documents.

Trump is always looking for leverage or an edge.

I would bet that Trump wanted to hold on to some of these documents because they would provide some type of proof or vindication against charges that might be made against him in the future.

None of these documents were originals. They were all copies. They already existed on hard drives or in paper forms at other places in the government.

This wasn't a case of retrieving single source documents.

This was a case of making sure that Trump did not possess any of the documents.

And Trump undoubtedly knew that if he ever needed back-up to support for something he did or did not do, or someone else did something they were not authorized to do, he would likely not get any support from anyone else in government to produce the document to support his position.

That is my guess as to what Trump's motivation was in all of this.

As evidence of that, consider this part of the indictment in which it is claimed that Trump shared classified national security information with a writer who was writing a book. The author taped the interview that Trump clearly was aware of. He was not hiding or concealing anything.

The context for this is that Trump stated that a "Senior Military Official" was telling the media ( I am assuming this might be General Mark Milley) that Trump wanted to attack Country A (I assume this was either Iran or North Korea).

Trump has a document on his desk during the interview that he motioned to and referred to in the conversation with the writer indicating that it was this Senior Military Official and the DOD who actually put together a plan to attack that country and presented it to Trump.

There is no evidence in the indictment that Trump actually showed the document to the writer. In fact, the recording indicates Trump asked a staffer if it could be shared with the writer and he was told "I don't know, we will have to see".

There is no doubt you can look at this exchange and argue that Trump violated the law.

However, was the underlying intent here to harm the U.S. government or American people or was his true intent to keep the U.S. government from attempting to harm him?

It is just another of many questions that are out there when looking at all of this.

I personally believe that it is probably best to move on from Trump in 2024 and find a younger and less controversial figures to lead the GOP ticket next year.

However, the zealousness in the attempts to get Trump is giving me doubts whether that makes sense.

The next Republican may not arouse the emotions that Trump engenders from the Left, However, every Republican gets demonized. Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, Romney, McCain. It made little difference.

Can we really expect it will be much better if it is DeSantis, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley or Pence?

I do know that if they are planning to use this case "to get Trump and put him away for good" they better not fail.

If they swing and miss they are taking an enormous risk---not just for themselves but for the country at large.

Can they get a conviction at trial or is all this just intended to further tarnish the Trump brand?

Jury trials these days are notoriously unreliable.

You can have an open and shut case and lose, (e.g, O.J. Simpson)

You can have almost nothing and get a conviction.

A lot depends on who is sitting on the jury.

If this trial was being held in D.C. you might as well lock Trump up right now. There is no way he could get a fair trial in that seat of our government where he only got 5% of the vote in the last election. (Trump  got 4% in 2016).

I assume the DOJ is not trying the case there because they know any conviction would only make Trump look like a martyr.

In South Florida, Trump at least has a chance to get a fair trial. Jury selection is going to be critical to the result. Can they get 12 men and women to vote unanimously to convict or acquit? 

Wherever this ends the fact that this case has been brought sets a terrible precedent.

Special Counsel Jack Smith stated in his press conference about that this case that this was all about the commitment to the rule of law in the United States.

Source: https://deadline.com/2023/06/donald-trump-indictment-classified-documents-jack-smith-1235413130/

That is the way it should be. 

However, was that the case with Hillary Clinton?

What about Hunter Biden?

What about the efforts of the FBI to stay silent when they knew the Hunter Biden laptop was not Russian disinformation in the month before the 2020 election?

What about the claims that Joe Biden and his family were involved in an international bribery scandal?

What about those at the FBI that participated in furthering the fake Russian collusion narrative?

What about the attorneys for Hillary Clinton who pushed the Russian collusion narrative?

Where are those prosecutions?

What about all the high profile FBI raids of Trump associates over the last few years whereas Democrats are allowed to show up for questioning when it is convenient?

Are we really dealing with one set of laws for everyone?

My fear is this case sets us on a path for a cycle of continued political retribution that would make us not unlike a banana republic. 

Trump may be guilty of something.

However, the failure to previously apply the laws to Hillary, the Bidens, the FBI and others, which appear far worse in scope and gravity, raises serious questions about where this goes from here.

There are consequences when you fail the most basic tenets of American justice. Those tenets were seemingly ignored in the name of politics. The attempt to argue that these tenets now have to be upheld rings a little hollow right now.

Have we reached the point that the law and rights mean nothing?

Does it only matter who is wielding the power of government at any given time?

Democrats and the D.C. Establishment like to say they are "Defending Democracy" in going after Trump. However, if he is really the reprobate that they make him out to be why not allow the electoral process to decide his fate? The obvious answer is they are not defending anyone but themselves.

How did we get here?

We often point to our Constitution and the rights and protections it is supposed to confer to everyone.

However, the Constitution will not protect anyone unless the people are willing to protect the Constitution.

Look at what happened during Covid. 

Consider the attacks we see daily on free speech.

The Constitution is under attack. 

Why?

Thomas Sowell explained it this way.

Truer words were never said.

It would be well to remember these words as we see what lies ahead next.