Someone Is Getting Indicted
The legal noose is tightening on Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the Biden White House is taking the fight to Republicans and Democrats keep winning special elections.
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you received this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up below.
When I served in government many years ago, if I had taken this material to my home and the FBI found it … I’d have gone to jail.
The material shown here is not your garden variety classified material. It includes SCI material, which stands for “sensitive compartmented information,” and one of the documents suggests that it could include “UP TO HCS-P/SI/TK.”
At the Washington Post, Philip Bump has spelled out what these acronyms mean:
“HCS-P” indicates material obtained from human sources, generally meaning informants or spies.
“SI” refers to communications intelligence, generally, material gathered from surveillance of online or telephone sources.
“TK” is short for “talent keyhole,” generally referring to satellite-based surveillance.
Simply put, Trump possessed classified materials that he wasn’t allowed to have — not only because they were highly classified, but because they weren’t his. Instead, they are the property of the US government. But that’s not even the worst of it.
As earlier affidavits from the government have shown, Trump obstructed the Justice Department from reclaiming these documents. His lawyers even signed statements in June claiming that all classified materials had been returned (they weren’t). It is precisely this obstruction that led the FBI to take the unprecedented step of procuring a search warrant to enter Mar-a-Lago and figure out what Trump had that he wasn't turning over. Contrary to the claims of Trump defenders that the FBI is engaged in a witch hunt against Trump or is seeking some political advantage against the likely 2024 opponent of President Trump, last month’s search was a direct result of the former president’s refusal to turn over material that the government had repeatedly and patiently requested. If Trump had simply returned all the documents he had last Spring when the Department of Justice started pressuring him, I doubt he’d face any legal scrutiny. Trump could have chalked the whole situation up to poor record-keeping. My guess is that considering his status as a former president, the FBI and Department of Justice would have let the matter drop. But that ship has most certainly sailed.
This is as close to a slam dunk legal case as you’re ever going to find. At this point, it would be shocking if Trump wasn’t indicted, not just for mishandling classified material and violating the presidential records act, but for obstructing justice. It’s genuinely hard to see what kind of defense Trump could mount. He’s alleged on his social media site, Truth Social, that he declassified the documents in question, yet his lawyers have made no such argument in court filings. And no markings on the documents suggest they’d been declassified.
According to an inventory of documents seized by the government (unsealed by a federal court this morning), the FBI found “dozens of empty folders with ‘classified’ banners” and found classified documents inter-mingled with Trump’s personal, unclassified documents. The mind reels at the level of incompetence and the security risks created by Trump’s actions. What possible defense could Trump have for keeping classified material in such a haphazard and insecure manner?
Even if the Department of Justice didn’t want to indict Trump over his actions, in this case, I’m not sure how they can avoid it. After all we’ve learned over the past several weeks, failure to act would represent a scandalous double standard. If, as Attorney General Merrick Garland has repeatedly stated, no one is above the law, then Trump must be indicted for actions that would send any other American to prison.
Biden’s Speech
Last night, President Biden traveled to Philadelphia to deliver a prime-time speech that his aides had billed as a warning to Americans about the ongoing assault on America’s democratic values. The address was partly that, but it was mainly a campaign speech intended to set the stage for the upcoming midterm elections. That’s not a criticism of Biden. I’m all for the president warning about the dangers that Trump and his supporters represent to American democracy. But it’s hardly a coincidence that Biden gave this speech the Thursday before the traditional kick-off of the Fall campaign (Labor Day weekend) and not two months ago (when the threats to democracy were just as real). Biden and his advisors want the fall campaign to be a referendum on Trump — and with good reason. The former president is deeply unpopular. He, quite reasonably, scares the hell out of millions of Americans. For the last two election cycles (2018 and 2020), fear and hatred of Trump have been a huge motivating factor in helping Democrats win elections. Every day that the political focus is on Trump, not the economy, inflation, or gas prices, is a good day for Democrats.
The focus on Trump is part of a larger and increasingly aggressive White House political strategy. We saw the first signs of this last week when the usually staid White House Twitter feed lambasted Republicans who criticized the president’s student loan forgiveness program … for having their own Paycheck Protection Program loans forgiven by the federal government.
It’s a move that cheered Democratic partisans, but it also showed that Biden is more than happy to get in the political muck. Since then, there’s been a definite and notable shift in what the White House is saying. Indeed, here are a few recent tweets from the WH Twitter feed.
Go back to early August or July, and the White House Twitter feed never even uttered the word “Republican.” Now, it is regularly attacking members of the GOP. Moreover, as was evident in Biden’s speech yesterday, the White House has decided to turn “MAGA Republican” into an epithet. It’s not that Democrats can’t run on their record of accomplishment — they can and they should. But American politics in 2022 is far more about demonizing the other party (and the other guy). To some extent, that’s always been the case in politics, but it’s even more true now, when the battle lines could not be more apparent. In short, the game is on, and Biden is taking the fight directly to Republicans.
Meanwhile in Alaska
In political news, Democrats won yet another special election — this time in Alaska. In the race to succeed Rep. Don Young, who died in March, Democrat Mary Peltola emerged victorious from a crowded field, which included former 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
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