The classified documents charges against Donald Trump warrant two questions. The first: Should he be prosecuted? The second: Did he violate the actual law?
Let’s answer the second question first, based on the allegations presented by the indictment: If Jack Smith has the evidence to back those allegations (and he appears to), then yes, Trump violated the law.
The current version of the indictment, again, points out the tape of Trump informing people with no security clearance that he is showing them classified documents — and that he could have declassified them if he had chosen to do so, but that he didn’t. Trump claimed for a few weeks that the actual document he showed them wasn’t classified, but Jack Smith now alleges they were in fact classified documents. If proved by witness testimony, Trump’s defense on that score implodes.
The current version of the indictment also alleges that another Trump aide, a maintenance person at Mar-a-Lago, worked to destroy evidence of Trump’s people moving around classified documents. It also alleges Trump ordered the security tapes be wiped. This looks like it fulfills the legal elements of obstruction, which is Smith’s accusation.
Now to the first question: Should Trump be prosecuted? The answer is, no. He shouldn’t be prosecuted. Hillary Clinton was let off the hook in 2016 for precisely the same crimes of which Trump is now accused, down to the wiping of the servers and the exposing of classified information to those without classification status.
Remember when Clinton directed her immigrant maid to print out classified information — and even enter a SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility) to pick up classified faxes, including the Presidential Daily Brief? Remember when Clinton’s tech firm used BleachBit to wipe away her private server’s classified emails — and then she joked about it, asking whether the server had been wiped “like with a cloth”?
Yet Clinton wasn’t prosecuted. Why? Because, as then-FBI Director James Comey said, despite the likelihood that foreign actors may have gained access to classified materials, Clinton didn’t have intent to distribute classified materials to foreign actors. Comey rewrote the law to avoid charging her because she was a presidential candidate.
Now, the DOJ is hitting Trump with the book.
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Everyone can see the legal double standard here. It’s perfectly obvious. And the double system of justice is far more of a threat to the country than Trump’s mishandling of classified information — which was not based on any nefarious security threat, but rather on Trump’s tendency to hoard materials he personally likes.
If half the country rightly believes when Republicans commit crimes, they go to jail, but when Democrats commit crimes, they get sweetheart plea deals, the credibility of the entire justice system collapses.
New charges were dropped on Trump the day after Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal was blown up by a judge — humiliating the DOJ in the process. The irony is not lost on anyone.
So no, Trump shouldn’t be prosecuted. His handling of classified materials was likely illegal and certainly foolish. But that foolishness isn’t anywhere close to the level of national security threat of Hunter Biden picking up bags of cash in Ukraine while his daddy presides over Ukrainian foreign policy — and Hunter calls in daddy as a shadowy enforcer.
And everyone knows it.