It’s Solely Donald Trump’s Fault

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Have a question for the Mayonnaise Clinic? I will answer them later this week. Please send them to [email protected]

Dear readers,

If you haven’t read the dossier of documents against Donald Trump, I suggest you do so. The indictment is an interesting read and also a damning one. (Also, I suggest you check out the special episode of Serious Trouble that Ken White and I released on Friday that breaks down what’s in it.)

It shows the former president kept documents he knew were classified, stored them in unsecured locations, showed them to people without security clearances, and repeatedly took steps to avoid complying with a subpoena for on their return including hiding documents from his own attorney, who went to Mar-a-Lago to look for them, and causing another of his attorneys to falsely swear to the government that all responding document has been returned.

In other words, Trump broke the law in a very clear way. If he had been less reckless if he had returned the documents regardless of how many times the government had asked for them back he would not have been charged. Chris Christie said it best on CNN last week:

He could have avoided all of this if he had simply returned the documents at any point … between January of 2021 and August of 2022. He is not here tonight, and the country is not here.

The arguments against the accusation are too thin to even be arguments. Hugh Hewitt wasn’t happy that the Feds didn’t see that Trump had sold any of the documents. (What about all the crimes Trump didn’t commit?) The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board called the accusation defamatory and argued the Presidential Records Act entitled Trump to keep certain presidential records, which it doesn’t. case, as explained by the National Archives. And even if Trump were allowed to store classified documents belonging to the US government on a ballroom stage in his personal, private club as some sort of former presidential power or privilege, that would not give him right to subpoena for documents or lie. to the government about which documents remained in his possession. Obstruction of justice is a crime.

The WSJ implicitly acknowledges Trump committed at least some of the crimes alleged in the indictment:

As always, Mr. Trump is his own worst enemy. It would have gone nowhere, former Attorney General Bill Barr told CBS recently, if the President had just turned over the documents. But he dragged them out for a year and a half.

And they added:

If prosecutors think this will absolve them of the political implications of their decision to charge Mr. Trump, they don’t understand what they’ve unleashed. It was once unthinkable in America that the governments awesome powers of prosecution would be returned to a political opponent.

Excuse me when did it become unthinkable that the DOJ could prosecute a political opponent of the president? Criminal cases are brought against politicians all the time, including opposition party politicians. If doing so is truly unthinkable, then politicians have effectively legalized crime. Granted, Trump’s extreme popularity makes the situation we’re in unusual, but the reason it doesn’t happen often is that you usually don’t have a front runner for a major party nomination who commits crimes, lots of crimes, crimes related to national security, and will not stop committing those crimes even when the government repeatedly asks him not to.

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People like those who make up the WSJ editorial board, who admit that Trump broke the law but still don’t think he should be prosecuted for it, should spell out what kinds of crimes a top executive shouldn’t be allowed to commit. politician I think Matt Glassman from the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown has it right: Dictating a party leader is really disruptive and will cause a lot of political strain for the legal system, and it shouldn’t be done lightly. If the case is a close call, the DOJ is right to take a pass. But it wasn’t a close call.

Dall-E image generation for A bathroom with a crystal chandelier, and an orange man with blond hair in a business suit reading a document in the bathroom, and boxes and boxes of files stacked everywhere, Pixar

Republicans then thought it was important to protect sensitive national security information. They used to think that obstruction of justice was such a serious crime that they impeached Bill Clinton for inciting false testimony in a civil case. If Trump is allowed to reveal secret war plans to reporters and have his lawyers swear false affidavits to the government, what crimes is it okay to criminally charge him with? He literally had to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue? I’d like to know what the WSJ opinion editors think the answer to that question is. I think the answer is that you can impeach Trump if and when Republican primary voters want him impeached for a crime.

In closing, the WSJ editorial gets to its real meat: This whole situation is politically damaging for Republicans:

The charges are a destructive intervention in the 2024 election, and the trial will potentially end the race. They also make it more likely that the election will be a referendum on Mr. Trump, rather than the economy and agenda of Mr. Bidens or a GOP alternative. This may be exactly what the Democrats intended with their bills.

Republicans deserve a more competent champion of better character than Mr. Trump. But the accusation could make GOP voters less inclined to give a democratic verdict on his suitability for a second term. Although the political impact is uncertain, Republicans tired of Mr. Trump may rally to his side because they see the prosecution as another unfair Democratic plot to derail him.

To which I say: well yeah. And whose fault is it all? Set aside the odd idea that not indicting Trump might make it more likely that Republican primary voters themselves would consider Trump unfit for office.

The rest of it is accurate, but it boils down to the problem that Donald Trump is a criminal beloved by Republican voters. That problem could be fixed if Trump stopped committing crimes, or if Republicans stopped condoning those crimes. This could be addressed if Trump’s opponents, other than Christie, talked about how Trump endangers both national security and the Republicans’ prospects of winning the next election, instead of sycophantically defending his right to commit crimes. Perhaps, as Noah Rothman suggests, they should start making the case that Trump would be a bad nominee if they want to convince voters to nominate them instead. Instead, the WSJ’s proposal is that the DOJ should let Trump get away with crimes.

It’s an insane proposition, but Republicans have spent so many years condoning all manner of Trump’s actions that it has become reflexive. They decided that doing so was their only option even though it would have a huge negative impact on both the country and the Republican Party. They watched Trump lose re-election; lose control of both houses of Congress; tank countless races for the House, Senate and Governor by supporting voter turnout candidates in the primaries; sic his supporters in the Capitol to attack his own vice president; and destroy what dignity party officials once possessed. They decided that they should let him do all this because there was no point in protesting. That was a choice that brought certain payoffs, such as a victory in the 2016 presidential election and strengthened control of the Supreme Court.

But they don’t have a good argument why the DOJ should help them through that humiliating process.

People keep asking me what I think this indictment means politically. And my answer is that I don’t think it matters that Republican primary voters don’t care if Trump mishandles classified information or obstructs justice. They don’t think he should obey the law; at least, most of them aren’t. But in a general election, Trump’s criminality is a serious liability. None of these things are widely popular; Trump’s poor character and dishonesty is one reason he never won a majority of the vote, and it is a significant offset to the political advantages he has gained by eliminating unpopular Republican positions in issues like Social Security.

This criminal case is going to be very disturbing indeed. The WSJ is right to say that the 2024 election is likely to be a referendum on Trump and his crimes, and they rightly think that would be worse for the country than having an election that is really about policy issues. But voters will have good reason to treat the election as a referendum on Trump: his character and behavior make him absolutely unfit to be president even if you prefer his policy agenda to Biden’s.

This is a very sad situation. But this is a situation Donald Trump has put us in, and the only place to point the finger is at him.

seriously,

Josh

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