Donald Trump is raving that he’s been unfairly targeted by his political enemies because of his position as former president and that he didn’t do anything bad with any classified documents. The truth is, he’s been spared due to his position, not targeted.
It looked like the documents scandal would provide enough fodder to indict him — until Joe Biden hatched a documents scandal of his own. If you groaned and said, “Oh my God, this is terrible,” you were in visceral touch with what happened.
Fox News grabbed onto this breaking story and then of course Donald Trump has done nothing but rebroadcast Fox News. If you go over to Truth Social, it’s like a four-wall theater event in a film festival over there. Ergo, here are a few simple charts that you can use to calm down your MAGA relatives, (or, alternatively, to tell them to stick it,) who we know have become utterly insufferable this week after news of the documents issue broke.
There are clear distinctions between the two classified documents cases involving President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump https://t.co/QmIE2flpov pic.twitter.com/697PtaYoM0
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) January 10, 2023
And here’s another one, made even simpler.
And here’s the bottom line:
This should & will be investigated. This occurs commonly & usually results in administrative rather than criminal action. Trump & team would have fared exactly same way had he not delayed, obstructed & potentially lied abt existence of classified records at MAL.
Big difference. https://t.co/PWaXPQI55F
— Mark S. Zaid (@MarkSZaidEsq) January 9, 2023
Mistakenly packing up classified documents with personal papers is a sin, but a venial sin provided that one puts things right once the documents are discovered.
Intentionally retaining classified material by defying government requests for its return is, on the other hand, a mortal sin. And there’s plenty of reason to think from prior reporting that what Trump did here was intentional. When the National Archives finally browbeat him into packing up and returning some documents early last year, “people familiar with the episode said Trump oversaw the process himself — and did so with great secrecy, declining to show some items even to top aides,” the Washington Post reported in August 2022. A New York Times report around the same time corroborated that, alleging that “Mr. Trump went through the boxes himself in late 2021, according to multiple people briefed on his efforts, before turning them over.” A Trump employee allegedly told the FBI that the boss himself had instructed him to move boxes of documents from the Mar-a-Lago storage room.
Why Trump insisted on retaining classified documents knowing the legal trouble it could bring him is unclear, but John Bolton’s theory has always struck me as elegant and plausible. Sometimes a child wants what a child wants, and the more you tell him he can’t have it the more he wants it.
Former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton on Trump’s motive for taking classified documents to Mar-a-Lago:
“He liked cool things, he saw things so he wanted to take them … Some days he liked to eat a lot of french fries, some days he took classified documents.” pic.twitter.com/b6yxgEqXbX
— The Recount (@therecount) August 16, 2022
I think Bolton’s nailed it here. I think it was that whimsical. Monday might have been French fry day and Tuesday was retaining Kim Jong Un’s love letters, etc.
An authoritarian like Trump will always struggle to grasp the distinction between his public office and his personal interest. (That deficiency led to the first of his two impeachments, in fact.) It’s the most logical thing in the world for him to have concluded that government property was and remains his personal property, especially when he had populist loudmouths like Judicial Watch chief Tom Fitton in his ear urging him to fight, fight, fight, fight, fight.
Maybe this will get worse for Biden. New reporting might reveal that there were more documents found at the Penn Biden Center than we thought or that their contents were especially sensitive or that he and his lawyers delayed notifying the National Archives or that they obstructed efforts to get the documents back. But until we hear any of that, we’re comparing a case of negligence to a case of theft. Both are examples of malfeasance but only one, if proved, is a crime.
All that is true. What is also true is that Fox News and right-wing media are saturating the airwaves with this bothsider whataboutism, and the facts are getting drowned. That’s the problem. And it’s a biggy. Jack Smith’s job just got exponentially harder. I hate to say those words, but I would be disingenuous if I didn’t.
But for now, you’ve got a tool to give to the MAGAs in your life, as they leap and dance and twirl, convinced once again that Trumpty Dumpty shall overcome.
Fox is downplaying this story compared to CNN. It’s been the top story for Erin Burnett and Anderson Cooper since Monday. The whataboutism on CNN has been exhausting.
There is no reasoning with a death cult.
Good summation: intentional theft with a search and selection of 300+ documents by TFG and an attempt to retain them that lasted months v. an unintentional screw-up of under 12 documents immediately handed over the very next day.
You are right. The right has taken this and ran with it. Hell, they make Forest Gump look like a sissy. But they have one big problem. When they get to the end of the string they will come to a sudden halt. Because at the end of the day Joe Biden is doing something Trump would never do. He’s cooperating. He’s the one in the catbirds seat. He could have told them to stuff it or that he would have to consult with his lawyers. He didn’t. He turned them over the next day after they were found. He then did a search of his property and found some more and turned them over. They are going to say that their was no raid. Well, the obvious thing here is there was no warrant to search his property because he opened the door. And he hired a competent lawyer to take the reigns on this runaway horse. That’s what else Trump can’t do which will very soon will become apparent. Trump doesn’t have a competent lawyer.