Former President Donald Trump was federally indicted on Thursday and the indictment was unsealed on Friday afternoon. The charges include thirty-one counts of willful retention of classified national-security information, five counts of obstruction of justice, and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice. These charges pertain to material Trump took from the White House after his presidency, stored in Mar-a-Lago, and refused to return. The enormity of the situation is evidenced by the evidentiary submissions, including remarkable photographs and excerpts of recorded conversations, found in the indictment.
The classified documents Trump stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities, of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack. Trump’s actions were less an act of mere carelessness than an active threat to United States national security, fueled solely by Trump’s demented behavior and sense of self-entitlement.
The former president’s illegal retention and comically insecure storage of classified documents that he made a point of randomly sharing in order to impress friends or complain about enemies is well established by the indictment. But that of course is only half of the indictment, the other half pertaining to what Trump did after the federal authorities became aware of his acts. This is the point where the obstruction and conspiracy charges begin. Per the document, Trump first asked one of his attorneys to aver to the feds that he had no classified documents. But when his attorney said it would be necessary to search the premises in order to certify to the FBI that Trump indeed held no classified information, the former president then explicitly directed a flunky to move boxes full of classified information from their unsecure storage space at Mar-a-Lago to his home on the property so that his own attorney wouldn’t find out he was lying about them.
Trump’s lawbreaking in this case simply boggles the mind with its recklessness and arrogance, even more so than what he did during the run-up to January 6. The selective enforcement argument falls apart when one reads the indictment. The former president intentionally stole some of America’s most critical national-security secrets for his private amusement and store them in recklessly insecure ways. It’s not simply that he broke the law, as in past-tense; he was continuing to break the law, and in ways that were dangerous as well as contemptuous.
At that point, you have to prosecute. Because if you don’t, it is going to happen again. Trump’s primary objection to Hillary Clinton was personal, but her dishonesty, her indifference to the rule of law? That is the gangster standard Donald Trump will tell you himself, at least off the record (and now in federal indictments), that he has always aspired to embody. For his benefit, not yours. Or America’s. It is up to the reader to decide whether to support him in the 2024 campaign or not.
