Hillary, Bill, Mike, Joe and Donald Walk Into a Bar

Thursday afternoon I learned that Jack Teixeira, a Massachusetts Air National Guardsman was indicted on charges of mishandling secrets.  The filing of criminal charges comes only two months after FBI agents arrested him at home on April 23.  The circumstances of this case are far different from the circumstances of former President Trump's handling of secret documents but I am reminded about the whataboutism that has overwhelmed the news space and interweb recently and sucked all of the oxygen from my living space. 

The former president has reminded anybody willing to listen that he is the target of witch hunt by the Department of Injustice and that Joe Biden is personally criminalizing his behavior while others are given a Get Out Of Jail Free Card. 

For myriad reasons I do not believe that Donald Trump will ever see the inside of a prison; nor to I believe he should.  But that is a different discussion for a different day.

What is the crux of today's post is that the Trump case differs from that of other politicians who have retained documents without suffering significant legal consequences.

Hillary and Bill Clinton, Mike Pence and Joe Biden have all been scrutinized for records-keeping related to their public service.  Trump suggests that the only reason he's been indicted is that he has been singled-out for persecution by an out-of-control FBI and Biden's Department of Justice.  

He is a victim.

This narrative is perfectly understandable for the politics and appeal to his supporters; yet it is a false equivalency as none of these individuals defied a federal subpoena and sought to conceal documents from law enforcement and their own attorneys.  To be fair, if Trump had complied with the subpoena in August of 2022 this entire matter might have blown over as a misunderstanding and avoided in its entirety.   

Karma.

The Trump case is all about the retention of documents that he was not entitled to keep; and that he did so willfully and defiantly thereby putting our national security interests at risk.

The Clinton private email server case was reviewed multiple times by the Trump DOJ in 2016, 2017, 2018 and, again, in 2019.  The conclusion was that while she may have been recklessly negligent she cooperated fully with the the investigation and it was determined that there was no intent to commit a crime.  Then FBI-Director James Comey reopened the investigation in October of 2016, weeks before the election, likely upending the election outcome.

Karma.

Trump has groused about secret documents that Bill Clinton retained.  This is a falsehood - not a double standard.  Clinton had interview tapes of his discussions with historian Taylor Branch which formed the basis of her 2009 book:  The Clinton Tapes - Wrestling History With The President.  Judicial Watch sought a court order requiring Clinton to turn the tapes over to  the National Archives.  The archives had already concluded that documents related to a president's official duties are Presidential Records and thus property of the National Archives.  Diaries, journals and book material are personal property.  A federal judge during the Obama era agreed.  I do not know if the tapes are still in Bill's socks drawer as Trump has claimed.

We have learned that both Biden and Pence had small numbers of classified documents in their possession.  They invited, and voluntarily complied with a search by FBI and turned everything over.  AG Garland has appointed a Special Counsel to conduct an investigation of Biden and the Republican House is investigating as well.  As there has been no obstruction no warrants have been issued.  Pence is not going to be prosecuted - he's a Boy Scout for God's sake!

The bottom line is that while all of the foregoing plays well in political and social media absolutely none of it is relevant in a court of law.  

Whataboutism is inadmissible as evidence in the Trump case as neither Biden, Pence or the Clintons are targets in this case.

Will we ever know why Donald Trump has, again, turned out to be his own worst enemy?  I dunno.  Part of me thinks he's a hoarder and his recklessness predictably got the best of him. My attorney has reminded me that a bad deal is always better than a good trial.  WTF - listen to your lawyers.

If you have nothing better to do, take some time to read the unsealed Trump indictment.  I did.  It's only 44 pages long.

Delving Into the Divide

At an LGBT campaign fundraising event in New York City back in 2016 candidate Hillary Clinton had this to say:      

I know there are only 60 days left to make our case – and don't get complacent; don't see the latest outrageous, offensive, inappropriate comment and think, ‘Well, he's done this time.’ We are living in a volatile political environment.        

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.    Right?  They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic – Islamophobic – you name it.  And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric.  Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.     

But the ‘other’ basket – the other basket – and I know because I look at this crowd I see friends from all over America here:  I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas and — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that ‘other’ basket of people are people who feel the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures; and they're just desperate for change.  It doesn't really even matter where it comes from.  They don't buy everything he says, but — he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different.  They won't wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they're in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.   

 -September 9, 2016         

That sure seems like another million years ago, eh?  However crudely Clinton stumbled into this – Donald Trump picked it up and ran with it.  All the way to the Whitehouse.  

I may despise Donald Trump (the person) but I absolutely get how his base feels.  Yeah, I get it.  It is real.  The more I read those words the more unsettled even I can get.  My neighbors are Americans.  While we may not agree on each and every last of the few differences we might have they are my countrymen.  Parsing them into ‘baskets’ and calling them ‘deplorable’ is wrong.   

Words have consequences, eh?