June 15, 2023

The Trump Indictment

Any Republican who thought he could get away with doing something illegal because Democrats did it first is too stupid to be our champion.

Last week’s indictment of Donald Trump is the latest example of why liberals really should have read my book, “Resistance Is Futile.” Or Aesop’s fable “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” Either one.

After years of making insane accusations against Trump, from Russian collusion to indicting him for misdemeanor record-keeping errors in his blackmail payments to a porn star, liberals finally have him dead to rights committing serious felonies. And no one believes them.

It’s your own fault, liberals.

Much to my surprise, the documents Trump had spirited away to Mar-a-Lago were not cheesy souvenirs appealing to his juvenile sensibility, like Shaquille O'Neal’s shoe or a picture with Kim Kardashian.

No, the documents he’d stuffed in Mar-a-Lago’s ballroom, bathroom and shower (among other highly secure locations) included information about our nuclear weapons programs, the defense capabilities of the U.S. and other countries, potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack, and plans for possible retaliation.

As Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr said in an interview with “Fox News Sunday,” these were “among the most sensitive secrets the country has.”

Plans to attack Iran drawn up by the Pentagon are NOT — as alleged in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal five days after the indictment was released — "newspapers, press clippings, letters, notes, cards, [and] photographs [gathered by President Trump].“ (Good to see the Dominion lawsuit has forced Murdoch’s companies to start being honest with conservatives!)

In another reminder that Trump defenders need to wait a beat before repeating his claims like trained seals, the government has Trump on audiotape boasting about how incredibly "secret” and “highly confidential” the documents are — as he showed them off to people at his Bedminster Club. “As president I could have declassified it,” he told the non-security-cleared person, “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”

How many Republicans have sworn up and down that Trump had declassified all the papers he removed from the White House? Now he’s on tape admitting that that was a lie.

Trump’s excuses — I declassified all of them! I complied with the Presidential Papers Act! It’s a political hit job! — are not only false, but irrelevant to the obstruction of justice counts against him. You can be completely innocent of the underlying charge, but you still have to produce documents in response to a subpoena. If a grand jury requested it, you’d have to produce Shaquille O'Neal’s shoe.

This is a basic requirement of Anglo-Saxon law. Otherwise, targets of investigations would fire up the shredding machines, evidence would disappear, and the legal system would grind to a halt.

Just last year, a lawyer in the U.K. was ordered to pay more than $700,000 for telling an IT manager to “burn” a message app in response to a search warrant for electronic communications. He wanted the messages destroyed for purely personal reasons, having nothing to do with the case.

But as an Above the Law column remarked at the time: “[H]ere’s a free tip [to lawyers] that is guaranteed to make your practice better: don’t tell clients to ‘burn’ evidence — yes, even if the contents are potentially embarrassing.”

Trump’s argument that he had a right to hide these documents from the government is the equivalent of Democrats’ “EVERYBODY DOES IT!” defense of Bill Clinton’s perjury in the Paula Jones case. (Fine, you’ve convinced me: All Democrats engage in oral sex with interns young enough to be their daughters.)

Like Trump, Clinton thought the underlying lawsuit against him was a political hit job, nobody’s business, his “private life.” So he perjured himself dozens of times during his sworn deposition.

After a DNA-stained blue dress proved he’d lied under oath, every single Supreme Court justice boycotted Clinton’s next state of the union address. They’d react the same way to Trump’s obstruction today. You can’t have a legal system if people lie under oath and defy subpoenas. It’s unfathomable that a president or ex-president would do these things.

Clinton’s criminal case ended with a deal. In exchange for not going to trial, he (finally) produced a “forthright admission that he gave false testimony under oath” — as The Washington Post put it — accepted a five-year suspension of his law license, paid $25,000 in fees, and agreed not to request reimbursement of his legal fees. He also paid Paula Jones $850,000 and another $90,000 to her lawyers for contempt, described by The New York Times as “part of the unprecedented finding of contempt of court against a President of the United States by a Federal judge.”

Trump’s case could end with something like that, or it could end with a report, reciting his crimes, but declining to prosecute, as happened to Hillary.

But it won’t, principally because prosecuting Trump helps Biden get reelected by revving up the Trump crazies, and — with any luck — winning him the nomination, rather than a sane person who could point out that Joe is visibly decomposing before our eyes, Kamala is an imbecile, and their combined track record is appalling.

Trump’s argument isn’t that he didn’t do it, but deflection. What about Hillary? What about Hunter Biden? It’s a double standard!

YOU DIDN’T ALREADY KNOW THERE WAS A DOUBLE STANDARD???

Any Republican who thought he could get away with doing something illegal because Democrats did it first is too stupid to be our champion, much less the Republican nominee for president.

You want to do something about the double standard, right-wingers? Run someone who enrages the left by winning, not by constantly creating legal messes benefiting no one but himself.

COPYRIGHT 2023 ANN COULTER

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.