Post by addisona on Aug 17, 2022 7:33:41 GMT
The gaps in Trump’s claims of a ‘deep state’ attack
First, the FBI seizure of government records stored in Donald Trump’s South Florida estate was the culmination of a bureaucratic conflict, not the initiation of a political war. The good people who keep track of presidential records had asked repeatedly for the documents at issue but had been met with grudging and partial compliance. Turning to the Justice Department was the archivists’ last resort — an escalation to end a negotiation in which Team Trump was oozing bad faith. The FBI search of a former president’s home was the external evidence of a long-term, mainly under-the-radar struggle over the custody of government-owned documents.
Second, Attorney General Merrick Garland has demonstrated a supreme indifference to politics. He did not originate the FBI search, but he approved it. He was, in essence, backing his own people in a case where the law was being obviously violated. This was not evidence of an anti-Trump political vendetta. It was Garland enforcing the law, even when it could be easily misconstrued as the result of an anti-Trump political vendetta. Thus Garland demonstrated one of the rarer political virtues: The attorney general was willing to look as though he was engaged in wrong in order to do what he believed was right.
Third, Trump has, once again, shown a deep misunderstanding of the high office he held. We recently learned that Trump, in a conversation with his chief of staff John F. Kelly, wondered why American generals could not be as loyal as “German generals in World War II.” (In Trump’s mind, evidently, there is no loyalty like Nazi loyalty.) As president, Trump falsely believed that every executive branch employee was his servant, required to obey his every selfish, capricious, vindictive whim. Now, as an ex-president, Trump seems to believe that every document produced by his administration is his personal property. It isn’t. As an ex-president, he presumes that he can declassify documents that he could declassify only before leaving office. He can’t.
The FBI search yielded, among other things, 11 sets of documents — one at the highest level of classification, “sensitive compartmented information”; four at the level of “top secret”; and three at the “confidential” level. Mishandling such documents is a crime — with legal consequences karmically strengthened by Trump as president.
This is enough to satisfy those who insist that “no one is above the law.” But most people will judge an FBI search of a former president’s home by the severity of the security breach that might have resulted. And this we still don’t know. Reporting on the contents of the documents has ranged from the absurd (information on Roger Stone’s corrupt pardon) to the apocalyptic (information on “nuclear weapons”).
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/trump-fbi-search-claims-distortion/
First, the FBI seizure of government records stored in Donald Trump’s South Florida estate was the culmination of a bureaucratic conflict, not the initiation of a political war. The good people who keep track of presidential records had asked repeatedly for the documents at issue but had been met with grudging and partial compliance. Turning to the Justice Department was the archivists’ last resort — an escalation to end a negotiation in which Team Trump was oozing bad faith. The FBI search of a former president’s home was the external evidence of a long-term, mainly under-the-radar struggle over the custody of government-owned documents.
Second, Attorney General Merrick Garland has demonstrated a supreme indifference to politics. He did not originate the FBI search, but he approved it. He was, in essence, backing his own people in a case where the law was being obviously violated. This was not evidence of an anti-Trump political vendetta. It was Garland enforcing the law, even when it could be easily misconstrued as the result of an anti-Trump political vendetta. Thus Garland demonstrated one of the rarer political virtues: The attorney general was willing to look as though he was engaged in wrong in order to do what he believed was right.
Third, Trump has, once again, shown a deep misunderstanding of the high office he held. We recently learned that Trump, in a conversation with his chief of staff John F. Kelly, wondered why American generals could not be as loyal as “German generals in World War II.” (In Trump’s mind, evidently, there is no loyalty like Nazi loyalty.) As president, Trump falsely believed that every executive branch employee was his servant, required to obey his every selfish, capricious, vindictive whim. Now, as an ex-president, Trump seems to believe that every document produced by his administration is his personal property. It isn’t. As an ex-president, he presumes that he can declassify documents that he could declassify only before leaving office. He can’t.
The FBI search yielded, among other things, 11 sets of documents — one at the highest level of classification, “sensitive compartmented information”; four at the level of “top secret”; and three at the “confidential” level. Mishandling such documents is a crime — with legal consequences karmically strengthened by Trump as president.
This is enough to satisfy those who insist that “no one is above the law.” But most people will judge an FBI search of a former president’s home by the severity of the security breach that might have resulted. And this we still don’t know. Reporting on the contents of the documents has ranged from the absurd (information on Roger Stone’s corrupt pardon) to the apocalyptic (information on “nuclear weapons”).
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/trump-fbi-search-claims-distortion/