Is Trump's indictment a partisan witch-hunt?
Background
Dear reader, I could string you along and reveal my answer to the headline question in the last sentence of this essay. But the answer is so apparent I will not. The indictment of Donald Trump is not a witch hunt inspired by political bias. If the Democrats had the desire and ability to produce meritless indictments out of thin air, they would have done so two years ago.
Two years of obstruction and lies
2021
As early as May 6, 2021, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) knew Trump had taken classified documents. They asked for them back. Trump and his lawyers lied and stalled for a year - in the interim, returning some while claiming they had returned them all.
December: Eight months after NARA requested Trump return the stolen property, Trump’s people say they have located 12 boxes of documents and would give them back.
2022
Jan. 17: Trump returns 15 boxes to the National Archives. In them, the NARA finds 197 documents with classified markings mixed in with the typical detritus of newspaper clippings, etc. that Trump keeps as a security blanket. NARA tells the Justice Department (DoJ).
Feb. 18: NARA informs a congressional oversight committee that the boxes contained classified information and confirms the DoJ referral. March 30: The FBI opens its investigation. April 26: A grand jury investigation begins.
April 29: DoJ asks Trump's lawyers for immediate access to the 15 boxes NARA has, citing national security interests. Trump's lawyers again ask for an extension. May 10: NARA informs Trump's lawyers that it will provide the FBI access to the boxes as soon as May 12.
May 11: A grand jury issues a subpoena to Trump and his office, requiring that they turn over all the classified materials they have. May 23: Trump's lawyers advise him to comply with the subpoena, but Trump balks. He tells them, "I don't want anybody looking through my boxes." Prosecutors, citing notes from one of the lawyers, say Trump wondered aloud about dodging the subpoena, asking his counsel, "Wouldn't it be better if we just told them we don't have anything here?" and "Isn't it better if there are no documents?"
June 2: One of Trump's lawyers returns to Mar-a-Lago to search boxes in the storage room and finds 38 additional classified documents. June 3: FBI agents visit Mar-a-Lago to collect them. Another Trump lawyer provides investigators a sworn certification that there are no others. NARA does not buy it.
Aug. 5: The Justice Department obtains a warrant to search Mar-a-Lago. Aug. 8: The FBI searches Mar-a-Lago, seizing 102 classified documents — 75 in the storage room and 27 in Trump's office, including three discovered in office desks.
2023
June 8: A grand jury in Miami indicts Trump. The unsealed indictment reveals that for months Trump instructed his body man, Walt Nauta, to move boxes from storage rooms to bathrooms, ballrooms, shower stalls, offices, and bedrooms to hide them from the authorities and bamboozle his own lawyers.
Republican reaction to the indictment
Wherever you are on the political spectrum, you cannot claim there was a rush to railroad Trump. He could have made it all go away two years ago in May 2021, simply by returning the classified documents. The DoJ accepts that stuff happens when officials leave office. And if they quickly rectify it, then ‘no harm no foul.’ Mike Pence and Joe Biden returned classified documents, without even having to be asked when they discovered their error.
But that logic does not dent the steel walls of denial shielding the GOP from reality.
Even before Special Prosecutor Jack Smith revealed the details of the indictment Kevin McCarthy was singing from the Republican ‘Whataboutist’ hymn book. On Thursday night, he tweeted,
“It is unconscionable for a President to indict the leading candidate opposing him. Joe Biden kept classified documents for decades.
I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice. House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”
First, President Biden did not indict anyone. Second, Republicans have the perverse idea that they speak for all Americans, when in every Presidential election since 1992, except 2004, the Democratic candidate has received more votes than the GOP nominee. Third, it is pretty ballsy for a member of the “lock her up” party to talk about the “rule of law.”
Republicans wanted Hillary jailed without a trial, while Trump has received more due process than any American in history. Dear God, the system case has assigned the case to Aileen Cannon, a judge he put on the bench. There are few players who get to pick their referee.
Over at the Senate, Mitch McConnell and most Republicans have been silent on the matter. Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) was an exception. He tweeted, on Friday,
“The two standards of justice under Biden’s DOJ is [sic] appalling. When will Hunter Biden be charged?”
Daines ignores that his House colleagues on the Oversight Committee have been investigating the Biden family for four months and have found nothing illegal — just the usual sort of international glad-handing and money-making, members of Presidential families have been doing for decades.
Hunter has received cash, but nothing like the $2 billion Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was gifted by the Saudis. And Joe is holding an empty bag, while Donald has minted it hand over fist, compliments of foreign actors. But Daines does not mention that.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) was more circumspect. He tweeted Friday that the presumption of innocence in America should also apply to Trump. And he attacked Democrats who celebrated the news while offering more misleading “But Joe did it too.”
“There is always a presumption of innocence in America, and that applies to former President Trump.
It is sad to see some Democratic politicians cheering this indictment and presuming guilt for sheer political gain, despite the fact that President Biden himself is under federal investigation for mishandling classified documents.
The American people's faith and confidence in the Department of Justice have eroded in recent years, and we must ensure that no partisan politics were injected at any point during this process.”
Poor baby. Imagine politicians celebrating the difficulties of a member of an opposing party. Is this the first time that has happened in politics?
Tillis also does not understand equivalency. His comparison between Biden and Trump is like comparing a drunk driver picked up for speeding in a school zone, and someone pulled over for a California roll through a stop sign at a little-traveled rural intersection.
If Americans' faith and confidence in the DoJ has eroded, who does he think caused it? Trump had six Attorneys General in four years — four of whom were “acting.” And four of whom were explicitly partisan.
Congress's loudest yapper, MT Greene, was predictable. She tweeted.
“Joe Biden shouldn't just be impeached, he should be handcuffed and hauled out of the White House for his crimes. It's no coincidence that the Department of Injustice came out with phony charges against President Trump the same day @GOPoversight reviewed damning evidence against Joe Biden.”
It is a sad attempt at distraction. Republicans are the House majority. If they think Biden merits impeachment, they could do it. They have not. Greene is just bloviating. As mentioned above, the House Oversight Committee has spent the last four months reviewing “damning evidence." Yet even these motivated partisans can find no crime — or trace even a dime going to Biden.
Matt Gaetz, the “dumber” to Greene’s “dumb,” plowed the same field, tweeting:
“The phony Boxes Hoax indictment is an attempt to distract the American public from the millions of dollars in bribes that the Biden Crime Family received from foreign nationals. This scheme won't succeed. President Donald Trump will be back in the White House and Joe Biden will be Hunter’s cellmate.”
This raving defense illuminates a typical Republican double standard. Gaetz says that Trump’s crimes, for which there is proof — spelled out and announced — are a hoax. While Biden’s crimes — for which Republicans have desperately tried and failed to find evidence — are real.
Conclusion
In the search for the truth, we must discard anything politicians say to defend their own and attack the other. The court of public opinion has no role in arbitrating criminal matters. Juries determine guilt.
Federal prosecutors do not work in a vacuum. Presidents of both parties nominate federal judges. Trump has picked three current Supreme Court Justices, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Barrett. And three others, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito, are Republican selections.
Republicans are crying that the Democrats are conducting a partisan witchhunt because that is what they would do it. In fact, that is what their House committees are doing — so far with sublime incompetence.