It now appears that disgraced ex-president Donald Trump is in the deepest legal jeopardy of his life, ironically because of something he did that he tried to accuse Hillary Clinton of: Mishandling classified information.
Clinton, it should be noted, was not president, and she didn’t have access to the highest level of top-secret data that Trump had as president. Also, Clinton didn’t leave such information laying around in cardboard boxes at a resort where almost anyone could have had access to the documents.
And yet, despite those very different facts, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is warning that if Trump is indicted and prosecuted, there’s going to be rioting in the streets.
Sounds like a threat, doesn’t it?
Appearing on Fox News, Graham said:
Graham got some well-deserved pushback on social media for his remarks:
Even though the affidavit released in redacted form by the Justice Department today leaves many questions unanswered, an attorney who specializes in national security law says three details we did get to see point to failed, one-term former president Donald Trump being indicted.
In a column he wrote for The Daily Beast, Bradley Moss explained “three essential points” he sees in the affidavit:
Trump was in unauthorized possession of national defense information, namely properly marked classified documents. He was put on notice by the U.S. Government that he was not permitted to retain those documents at Mar-a-Lago. He continued to maintain possession of the documents (and allegedly undertook efforts to conceal them in different places throughout the property) up until the FBI finally executed a search warrant earlier this month.
With that framework having been established, Moss continues:
Trump doesn’t even have any sort of plausible defense, Moss notes:
All in all, this case should and in my opinion will result in an indictment. Sure, an indictment does not equal a conviction. Trump is still assumed innocent until proven guilty. There are unknown variables like whether the prosecution would occur in Florida or in D.C. We do not know what evidence Trump might have to substantiate his declassification claim. And we do not know what the courts would say about his various arguments. Get the popcorn ready either way.
Tristan Snell, who prosecuted the ex-president for his Trump University scam, agreed with Moss:
Time for Donald Trump to finally pay the price for his lifetime of crime.
Donald Trump is going to have trouble sleeping tonight, especially since the Justice Department has just made it clear that there are numerous people at Mar-a-Lago who turned him over to the DOJ for hoarding classified documents.
The heavily redacted affidavit used to justify a search warrant of Trump’s Palm Beach resort reveals that prosecutors are worried witnesses could face threats or other harm in order to obstruct the ongoing investigation.
Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance focused in on the mention of multiple witnesses during an appearance on MSNBC:
“One very interesting tidbit we get from the legal memo that DOJ submitted to unseal the redacted version of the affidavit is what I think is the first effort to quantify the number of cooperating witnesses that DOJ had when they obtained this search warrant. They’re talking about the need to protect their witnesses from any sort of potential harm, and they say that there are a significant number of civilian witnesses. So we don’t know — is that five? Is that 10?”
Vance continued:
“But I think it’s important to realize here that DOJ was not just relying on one or two witnesses. Likely this is, as they say, a significant number of civilian witnesses as well as people in law enforcement who need to be protected as this investigation moves forward, and that puts into context what we’re looking at here.”
Additionally, Vance noted the unprecedented nature of what the country currently finds itself in the middle of:
“We’re talking about a former president of the United States who’s clearly taken with him when he left office materials, whether they’re classified or not, that could do grave damage to our national security if they’re disclosed in an inappropriate fashion, and not only is that former president resistant to returning those documents, also DOJ has legitimate reasons to believe that there are risk to witnesses who are helping complete this investigation. That should be a sobering moment for us to realize we’re in this situation with former President Trump.”
A noted journalist who has written extensively on the CIA, FBI, and Secret Service laid some uncomfortable truth on Fox News host Jesse Watters during an appearance on his show Thursday evening.
Ronald Kessler, author of the book, The Secrets of the FBI, explained to Watters what was probably in the classified documents failed former president Donald Trump took to Mar-a-Lago when he left the White House, explained:
Kessler added that the documents could also be about CIA “penetrations” of foreign nations, especially ones that have an adversarial relationship with the United States:
“Another is our penetrations by the CIA of foreign embassies, of foreign leaders like Putin, as well as recruitment of foreign spies overseas. So, we’re talking about incredibly valuable secrets that the Russians would have been after. The Russians would have been trying to penetrate the day and night and very possibly did recruit spies to obtain these documents.”
Rather than let Kessler continue, Watters interrupted him so he could defend Trump:
“So you’re saying that they could be there? We have no idea if they’re there or not and will never know and at this point based upon all of your reporting and the report we just did at the top you can’t trust these guys because they lie and they plant evidence for a living.”
As usual, Fox doesn’t want the actual truth about what Trump may have done. It gets in the way of their attempt to portray the disgraced ex-president as some sort of saint or savior. But a traitor is a traitor, and if it’s proven that Trump gave or sold top-secret materials to other countries, he deserves the harshest possible penalty.
Disgraced former president Donald Trump is scared sh*tless, and the proof is in postings he made Thursday on his Truth Social site, asserting that he’s “as innocent as a person can be.”
Four postings in particular show just how rattled Trump is these days, but the first one he fired off has drawn the most attention and online mockery:
Innocent? That’s a laugh!
The next three postings were also laughable:
Those four “truths” as they’re called on Trump’s site were quickly shot to pieces on Twitter.
It’s starting to sound like Dotard Don knows he’s screwed. His fear is palpable and his protestations are (like him) absurd.