The Evidence of Trump’s Criminality Is Everywhere

[ad_1]

Picking Donald Trump’s worst week is a tricky game with many to choose from, and compelling arguments for some but only because they cover so much of Trump’s experience, the last few days are symbolic.

On Saturday, the former president called for an end to the United States Constitution[d] in response to his own bogus claims of election fraud in 2020. On Monday, he lied about what he said and blamed the media. On Tuesday, his choice candidate for the US Senate in the once reliable ruby ​​state of Georgia lost to Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock, ending a midterm cycle in which Democrats broke with precedent, thanks in large part to part in the presence of presidents and major interventions. And then there are Trump’s problems with the law.

On Tuesday, a Manhattan jury found the Trump Organization guilty of 17 crimes, headlined by tax fraud and including conspiracy and falsifying business records, all as part of a scheme to avoid paying taxes on the salaries of top officials. On Wednesday, The Washington Post broke the news (soon to be matched by other outlets) that an outside search team hired by Trumps lawyers turned up even more classified documents he took with him when he left the office, these in a West Palm Beach storage unit.

David A. Graham: It’s just fraud all the way down

Together, these two news stories show Trump’s widespread lawlessness, from the mundane to the outlandish. Business crimes are a classic small-time offense. The only notable thing about that case is that it happened to involve the company of former presidents. Meanwhile, in the case of classified documents, the evidence suggests that he committed a crime that almost no one but a former president could have committed.

The revelation of documents at the storage facility is the latest twist in the ongoing saga of Trump removing public records from the White House. Although evidence emerged that the former president did not comply with conservation laws even before he left office, the story broke in August with an unusual search by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago. Not only did the agents release boxes full of documents that appeared to have been improperly seized, but some of them were labeled as highly sensitive, potentially important to national security.

The newly discovered classified documents were returned to the FBI, the Post reports. The search appears to represent his legal team scrambling to ensure full compliance with a subpoena, under pressure from a federal judge. The teams also combed other Trump sites to see if the materials turned up, according to The New York Times. The Post reports that the unit had a mix of boxes, gifts, suits and clothes, among other items indicative of the chaotic and careless manner in which Trump handled, well, almost everything.

David Frum: Trumps reckoning with the rule of law

In practice, only a former president could possibly get into this situation. Many federal employees have classified or top-secret clearances (and the overclassification of documents is a real problem), but when other federal employees are caught removing secret documents, they are clearly subject to sanctions. Meanwhile, Trump has tried to insist that before leaving office, he used his presidential prerogative to declassify the documents, despite no evidence of it being more than his word, as such.

But even if Trump leans on the declassification excuse, it has little to do with the simpler matter of Trump taking records that belong to the American people, not to himself and other federal employees who removed of such documents cannot be claimed in vain, as he did. , that he is the owner of the documents and is still demanding that the Justice Department return them. His obtaining the documents and mishandling them was a gross abuse of the trust placed in him as president.

If the details of the document case are unusual, the Manhattan tax case usually yawns. The jury found that the Trump Organization gamed the tax system to try to avoid paying taxes on executive salaries: The company gave top employees free cars, apartments, and other perks but did not include them in their reported compensation. That’s a simple and straightforward violation of the nickel-and-dime scam pattern that happens all the time, because it’s so easy to do and often goes undetected. If Trump hadn’t been president, the fraud at his company wouldn’t have been national news, and it might have gone unnoticed; his fame has drawn new scrutiny of his business.

David A. Graham: The art of self-dealing

The former president himself was not charged or convicted in the fraud case, although prosecutors argued at trial that he was involved in the scheme and personally approved parts of it. (Trump has denied wrongdoing and promised to appeal the ruling.) The Trump Organization was fined $1.6 million, a pittance compared to its profits. Meanwhile, the New York attorney general accused Trump of another fraud scheme in which he offered wildly fluctuating valuations on properties, allegedly in an attempt to save himself tax bills or reduce his loan costs.

For now, however, the Manhattan verdict is largely symbolic, although symbolism is important in politics, as Trump has long understood. And along with new classified documents, it shows how no infraction is too big or too small to tempt him.

[ad_2]