Editorial: GOP’s Disinfo Wars

 After former President Donald Trump was indicted for his misuse of classified documents, Republican leaders largely embraced Trump’s claims that he did nothing wrong and the charges are politically motivated. “Most Republicans believe we live in a country where Hillary Clinton did very similar things and nothing happened to her,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said June 11 in an ABC News interview.

Graham has come a long way since May 3, 2016, when he said, as Trump was on the verge of becoming the presumptive Republican nominee, ”If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed ... and we will deserve it.” Snopes.com noted that Graham repeatedly said Trump was not qualified to be president and that his involvement in the election process was damaging to the Republican party. 

Graham lost whatever principles he once had as he became one of Trump’s most vocal defenders. But his prophecy is coming true as the Republican National Committee is requiring candidates to pledge support for the party’s eventual nominee, even if he is criminally indicted in several jurisdictions.

After Trump’s June 13 arraignment in federal court in Miami on 37 felony counts, he was released on his own recognizance, which is very unusual for persons charged with violations of the Espionage Act. He also was allowed to keep his passport, which is even more unusual. The magistrate ordered Trump not to talk with his indicted aide, Walt Nauta about the case without their lawyers.

Upon his release, Trump went to a Cuban cafe in Miami, where he offered to buy lunch for patrons, then left without paying, and he flew back to New Jersey, where, at a fundraiser at his Bedminster, N.J. golf club, Trump claimed President Joe Biden had him arrested on “fake and fabricated charges.” There is no evidence Biden played any role in Trump’s case. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed career prosecutor Jack Smith as special counsel in the case to avoid perception of political interference.

Trump said the Presidential Records Act gave him “sole discretion” to “segregate personal materials,” but the National Archives and Records Administration said the documents at issue were clearly government property, not personal materials, and the charges were brought under the Espionage Act, which prohibits willful retention of national defense information and has been used to prosecute about a dozen people accused of holding on to classified documents over the past five years, the New York Times reported.

Trump claimed he “had every right to have these documents” because a judge in 2012 determined audiotapes Bill Clinton made of interviews with an author when Clinton was president, which were reportedly kept in in Clinton’s sock drawer in the White House, were personal records. But Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents were labeled “classified” and clearly were related to national defense. They were not personal.

Trump also sought to revive the controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email account for exchanges with her staff during her time as secretary of state, but the hundreds of classified documents stored in boxes in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence are not comparable, experts told PolitiFact. 

“The situation of Mrs. Clinton is, at most, only superficially comparable to what has been alleged against Mr. Trump in the federal indictment,” said Bradley Moss, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer who works on national security cases. 

PolitiFact noted Clinton’s email troubles started in 2014, when the Republican-dominated House Select Committee on Benghazi asked the State Department for all of her emails. The department didn’t have them all because Clinton used a personal email address housed on private servers in her Chappaqua, New York, home.

Clinton’s lawyers combed through the private server and turned over about 30,000 work-related emails to the State Department and deleted the rest, which Clinton said involved personal matters, such as her daughter’s wedding plans.

On July 5, 2016 — four months before the presidential election — the FBI released its findings on Clinton’s emails. In summary, it said classified information had been improperly transmitted, but carelessness, not an intent to skirt the law, was the cause. 

Then-FBI Director James Comey said of the 30,000 emails, 113 were determined to have contained classified information at the time they were sent. Comey said three of those had a marking indicating they were classified, and that 2,000 more were marked as classified after the fact by various agencies.

A 2018 Justice Department review of how the FBI handled its investigation noted that prosecutors found no evidence that Clinton and her colleagues ever intended to put classified materials into their email exchanges.

Ironically, suspected Russian hackers gained access to the State Department’s email system in 2015. The cyber attackers who breached the State Department’s system are also believed to be behind hacks on the White House’s email system, several other federal agencies, as well as the Democratic and Republican national committees. But the FBI said in August 2018 that it has no evidence Hillary Clinton’s private email server was compromised, even though then-President Trump tweeted a news report that alleged the Chinese had hacked it.

After leaving the White House, in January 2021, Trump took troves of boxes containing hundreds of classified documents to his home in Florida, according to the federal indictment released June 9, and he refused to return many of them when the National Archives and Records Administration requested them.

“Trump was not authorized to possess or retain those classified documents,” according to the indictment by a federal grand jury in Miami. And Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s residence and social club, “was not an authorized location” to keep, display or discuss classified documents.

Trump kept documents that included information about defense weapons capabilities, the United State’s nuclear programs and US military weaknesses throughout the property, the indictment said. The indictment includes photos of stacks of boxes stored in a ballroom, bathroom, shower, storage room and his bedroom. 

When instructed to turn over all documents with classification markings, Trump did not comply, the indictment said. Instead, investigators said Trump suggested his attorneys lie to the FBI and the grand jury, instructed his aide to move and conceal the boxes, and suggested his attorney destroy the documents.

Trump’s defense so far has consisted mainly of unfounded claims and diversions from his culpability. And the Greedy Oligarch Party has backed up his campaign of lies, to their shame.  — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2023

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