Former Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano is convinced that failed, one-term former president Donald Trump will indeed be indicted for violations of the Espionage Act, which is ironic since the disgraced ex-president once said such crimes were deserving of a death sentence.
Writing in the conservative Washington Times, Napolitano lays out the case against Trump:
Even a cursory review of the redacted version of the affidavit submitted in support of the government’s application for a search warrant at the home of former President Donald Trump reveals that he will soon be indicted by a federal grand jury for three crimes: Removing and concealing national defense information (NDI), giving NDI to those not legally entitled to possess it, and obstruction of justice by failing to return NDI to those who are legally entitled to retrieve it.
Napolitano also notes that Trump made one of the biggest mistakes a potential defendant can possibly make: Denying something before he had been accused of it:
Under the law, it doesn’t matter if the documents on which NDI is contained are classified or not, as it is simply and always criminal to have NDI in a non-federal facility, to have those without security clearances move it from one place to another, and to keep it from the feds when they are seeking it. Stated differently, the absence of classification — for whatever reason — is not a defense to the charges that are likely to be filed against Mr. Trump.
He committed a mortal sin in the criminal defense world by denying something for which he had not been accused.
But most ironic of all, Napolitano concludes, is that Trump once said anyone charged with crimes of espionage should be executed:
In a monumental irony, both Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks journalist who exposed American war crimes during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency employee who exposed criminal mass government surveillance upon the American public, stand charged with the very same crimes that are likely to be brought against Mr. Trump,” Napolitano wrote. “On both Mr. Assange and Mr. Snowden, Mr. Trump argued that they should be executed. Fortunately for all three, these statutes do not provide for capital punishment.