(Due to technical difficulties, Copeland’s Corner is a little late this week. My apologies and my thanks for your continued support.)
In an historic, yet not entirely unexpected move, Former President Donald Trump was indicted this week on seven federal counts in connection with his illegal retention of hundreds of classified documents at his private residence at Mar-A-Lago. While the indictment will be sealed until Tuesday, it is being widely reported as of this writing that the charges include:
Willful retention of national defense information.
Corruptly concealing documents.
Conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Making false statements.
The retention of the classified national defense documents constitute a violation of the Espionage Act and carries a 20-year prison term if convicted.
Within an hour of news of the indictments being released, the Trump campaign began using the criminal charges to fundraise from the members of his base who are still drinking the Kool-Aid. In a video statement on his Truth Social platform, Trump claimed that the Biden Administration had indicted him and that the entire exercise was a political ploy to keep him from being President again. His sycophants in the House of Representatives, like Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, are screaming bloody murder regarding the charges and the “weaponization” of the Justice Department. Those on the far right who would indeed still support him if he murdered someone on 5th Avenue in New York are behaving true to form and defending and rationalizing his actions, spewing misinformation and MAGA propaganda.
They are echoing Trump’s claim that it was Joe Biden who indicted him. Untrue. It was a grand jury consisting of 23 Floridians (a state Trump won twice, incidentally) who looked at the evidence presented to them by Independent Counsel Jack Smith and determined that there was sufficient evidence that the aforementioned crimes had been committed. Neither President Biden nor Attorney General Merrick Garland had anything to do with it. That is why Garland invoked the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 and brought in Smith, a career prosecutor, as Independent Counsel in the first place. Under that law, the Independent Counsel is tasked with investigating Presidents and other high-ranking government officials without interference or political pressure from either party.
Trump’s defenders are claiming that he is being singled out, since classified material was found at the residences of President Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence. This argument is apples and oranges. A few documents were found in the personal residences of both men, who immediately contacted the National Archives, turned in what they had discovered, and allowed voluntary FBI searches of their homes to make sure that there weren’t any more. Again, we’re talking about a few documents apparently packed inadvertently when both men left the Vice Presidency, and they were turned over to the proper authorities on the day they were discovered.
Trump, on the other hand, had hundreds of classified papers, refused requests from the Nation Archives to return them from the time of the first request, four months after he left office, until Mar-A-Lago was raided by the FBI last year. He turned in a few documents and claimed that they were the only classified materials he had when he was hiding boxes of material so sensitive that their dissemination could literally cost American lives. He’s even recorded saying that he had a classified document in his desk. Pence and Biden didn’t lie or engage in a conspiracy to try and keep the documents they found.
Lastly, Trump defenders are saying that the classified material he had consisted of “copies.” Not the original documents. That is true and it means absolutely nothing as far as federal law is concerned. Edward Snowden, now in exile in Russia to avoid prosecution for similar charges, stole copies. Chelsea Manning, who served prison time for stealing and disseminating America’s secrets, stole copies. Julian Assange is looking at a long prison stretch for disseminating classified copies.
Bottom line here is that you can’t defend the indefensible.
To me, the worst part of all of this is that after being indicted on 34 felony counts in New York, indicted on 7 federal charges including espionage, found liable for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll, the Trump Organization being found guilty of 17 counts of criminal fraud, a looming indictment by a grand jury in Georgia for pressuring its Secretary of State to “find” 11,700 votes to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in that state, a probable federal indictment on the horizon for his involvement and conspiracy in creating the January 6 insurrection, Donald J. Trump is still the likely Republican nominee for the 2024 Presidential race. He is still the GOP standard bearer.
Is this really the best that they can do? If so, that party needs to dissolve itself and rebuild from the ground up.