Trump should have stored his documents in a garage
The Babylon Bee ran a story about the documents and President Trump. The headline reads, "Trump Indicted for Keeping Classified Documents at Mar-A-Lago Instead of Somewhere Secure like the Trunk of a Corvette." Yes, he should have bought a Corvette and a big house with a garage. Or he could have used a private server to run his presidency? He'd be okay either way.
The indictment raises serious questions. The decision to indict raises more questions because the DOJ has now gone "banana republic" on us. The Wall Street Journal raises some important questions:
In the court of public opinion, the first question will be about two standards of justice. Mr. Biden had old classified files stored in his Delaware garage next to his sports car. When that news came out, he didn't sound too apologetic. "My Corvette's in a locked garage, OK? So it's not like they're sitting out on the street," Mr. Biden said. AG Garland appointed another special counsel, Robert Hur, to investigate, but Justice isn't going to indict Mr. Biden.
As for willful, how about the basement email server that Hillary Clinton used as Secretary of State? FBI director James Comey said in 2016 that she and her colleagues "were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information." According to him, 113 emails included information that was classified when it was sent or received. Eight were Top Secret. About 2,000 others were later "upclassified" to Confidential. This was the statement Mr. Comey ended by declaring Mrs. Clinton free and clear, since "no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case."
This is the inescapable political context of this week's indictment. The special counsel could have finished his investigation with a report detailing the extent of Mr. Trump's recklessness and explained what secrets it could have exposed. Instead the Justice Department has taken a perilous path.
A serious path indeed, because this is how a banana republic does it. Yes, banana republics indict the guy from the other party leading the incumbent in the polls. They find a man and then look for the crime. In the meantime, they are left with bananas and not a republic.
PS: Check out my blog for posts, podcasts, and videos.
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.