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As a general matter, people who are indicted and punished for absconding with classified material tend to have done one of two things. First, they either spread that classified material by leaking to foreign governments, to the press or using it to write their memoirs. Or second, even if they don’t engage in such behavior, they are a person who has a lot of enemies in the enforcement bodies in question. If you hand your enemies a baseball bat, you shouldn’t be surprised when they smash you with it.
The Donald Trump documents scenario looks very much like the second category, but it might also be the first. Given the nature of the transcript of the audio recording where Trump was waving about a military plan to attack Iran, it seems like the former president kept a slew of documents he deemed worthwhile as items for his defense — perhaps a future book of score settling from his time in office, estimated page length 18,000 and counting.
Whatever the motivation, it seems clear Trump cannot argue that he didn’t know these documents were classified and that he could, as a former president, declassify them. He says as much in the conversation with staffers for Mark Meadows. But he can argue to the court of public opinion that he is being singled out by his enemies, and there his case is stronger. No partisan Republican, even those who dislike Trump, view this as a valid path aimed at justice. They view it as harassment, and their faith in America’s law enforcement bodies will continue to sink toward single digits.
The unprecedented step of indicting a president whose hoarding tendencies include secret material when such indictments were not handed down for Hillary Clinton — whose classified material was so digitally mishandled that it ended up on Anthony Weiner’s laptop — is a thing in itself, but the case with Joe Biden is much more applicable here. And the idea a future Republican administration will go soft on that case out of the goodness of their heart doesn’t understand what today’s GOP has become.
We do not want to become the kind of nation where part of the job of being commander-in-chief is understanding that at the end of your time in office, you will be sued to the nth degree at every opportunity by your political enemies in any jurisdiction. That invites ruthless people willing to bear such attacks in pursuit of raw power, the same people likely to deploy them against others. Should Trump return to office, expect him to embark on a four-year race for vengeance in hunting down his enemies. And given that he won’t be able to run for re-election, there will be no brakes.
As for the rest of the presidential field: they have to hope that this development, much as it reinforces Trump as a sympathetic figure for Republicans, will also make them worry about the electoral risk associated with a man fending off so many legal threats. The GOP is tired of losing, and they want to win desperately this cycle. If you can offer them the possibility of Trump-like policies without the constant legal headaches, maybe that will be enough — but just maybe.
