Before news could break from the Feds on June 8th, former President Donald Trump announced his record-making indictment on federal charges. He faces allegations of his mishandling of classified information at his Mar-A-Lago estate in Florida. As of now, he’s the first former President to face criminal charges from the same feds he was just leading.
First announced on his social media platform “Truth Social,” Trump outlined for his followers what the Biden administration had gotten wrong and leveled accusations at President Biden for doing the same while as a Vice President (and thus unable to declassify anything like Trump could). He told his followers that this was smoke and mirrors and began using it for his 2024 Presidential campaign fundraising.
This kind of tactic isn’t surprising given the situation and the timing.
The decision by President Biden to attack his closest political rival on the exact day Republican leaders were set to bring up documents about Joe and Hunter. The duo was each paid $5 million by the Ukrainian gas company Burisma to ensure a corruption probe was swept under the rug. A move like this was a great way to ensure the lamestream media didn’t pick up on the Biden family secret.
With another indictment sitting out there in New York, as well as other investigations in Washington and Atlanta, Trump has the deck stacked against him. Biden and his bands of leftists seem bound and determined to do everything they can to prevent Trump from having a satisfactory 2024 Presidential campaign.
Appearing on CNN on that very evening, one of Trump’s attorneys James Trusty (sounds like a bad Simpson’s character) told the hosts that the charges include willful retention of national defense information. This crime is classified under the Espionage Act, and this handling of government secrets can include obstruction, false statements, and conspiracy.
Given the Justice Department’s previous attempts to (falsely) link Trump with Russian interference in the 2016 election that came up short, those working the case seem to want him badly. With their policy to not indict a sitting president, they elected to wait until he had left office to go after him.
And go after him they did.
In November 2022, Attorney General Merrick Garland showed that he was willing to back up his long-held stance that nobody is above the law. Selecting war crimes attorney Jack Smith to lead the document probes as well as investigations into allegations Trump tried meddling with the 2020 election.
When those election quests turned up nothing, Smith went full tilt against Trump and reports that he held documents at his Mar-A-Lago residence. He also wanted Trump for obstructing government officials’ attempts to get the records back. These allegations and their supporting evidence now have that indictment rolling full steam ahead.
Over 300 classified documents were alleged to have been taken by Trump when he left the White House and when the feds raided his Florida estate, they unearthed over 100 of those documents. Since then, they have conducted other raids and held grand juries to see what they could do to charge Trump.
Given the guidelines and rules regarding the handling, storage, dissemination, and processing of classified documents, these felonies could easily spell years in jail.
However, the insistence of Trump that the documents had been unclassified as he was able to do that himself would make his possession of these documents legal. If he (while still in office) declared something to no longer be a state secret, he would have been within his legal rights to keep copies for himself.
If Trump can prove he declassified the documents, then they should be made available for public viewing. More to the point, if he can prove he did this, then Biden will have only underscored the already widely known fact that he and his family have been using the justice department and other government entities for his own use.
When even Trump’s former ally and now fellow Presidential campaign opponent FL Governor Ron DeSantis called the charges “the weaponization of federal law enforcement,” you know you screwed up.