The Grand Illusion
“The Democrats and Merritt Garland raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, and now they’re coming for you.”
Republicans are flooding the internet with that sentence, or something like it.
But it’s a scare tactic with almost no elements of truth behind it. First off, the Department of Justice has been trying for months and months to get Trump to return the classified materials.
Trump ignored the requests. Then several months ago, some fifteen boxes of classified material were returned. FIFTEEN BOXES of sensitive material that many nations would love to get their hands on, and that was stored with virtually no safeguards, documents he was supposed to return a year and a half ago. A Trump attorney signed an affidavit declaring that all material had been returned. Someone lied, because an informant tipped off the DOJ that more documents remained at Mar-A-Lago. A search warrant was issued.
The FBI didn’t burst into Trump’s mansion. They presented the warrant and were admitted – and found more sensitive and classified material.
They didn’t make it all public. Trump did… claiming he was raided, as if he were some innocent person and that it was all unexpected.
Really?
Trump was briefed on how to handle such material. All presidents and senior government officials handling such matters are briefed routinely. He didn’t follow the law, and now he’s complaining because he was caught. What he’s really claiming is that he should be above the law.
But the right-wing Republicans, which is what most of them are today, who’ve been so behind law enforcement officers suddenly aren’t supportive of law enforcement. Those very same Republicans are howling as if Trump were innocent and this is some miscarriage of law enforcement. Just like they think that rioters who staged the January 6th insurrection should be above the law.
Because, after all, white males, especially wealthy ones, don’t have to be law-abiding if the law gets in the way of what they want. And they certainly don’t believe in democracy if anyone else gets more votes.
I suppose I’ve read about 80% of your books over the last 28 or so years since I first encountered Recluce. And in that time I’ve used them not just for entertainment, but for perspective. Bits and pieces that can be a lens on our own politics and culture have actually help refine my opinions and ideologies on politics, religion, complexity and nature of ethics and morality. A good book is one that forces me to spend as much time thinking as I do reading, and you deliver there. In all that time that you’ve been my “preorder every audiobook” you’ve created brilliant characters who are simultaneously hero and antihero, and some some who are nasty pieces of work. But none who as yet match the absurd reality of Donald Trump, the first president who made me take a serious look at simulation theory, on the thought that someone out there is having one over on us. But, his rhetoric plays people’s desire for simplicity they can wrap their head around and an ideology that sings to base, misdirected patriotism while providing some “people over there” to blame it all on. And I’m still not sure which terrifies me more, the fact that such a person can gain power on the strength of a long con, or the fact that so many of my fellow veterans are on his bandwagon and singing his song with all their might. Just finished Councilor, can’t wait until Contrarian. Thanks for being prolific!
Just one question – Is Trump an empath? That would explain everything.
This is the same sort of thing in terms of behavior, which Hillary Clinton did with the whole e-mail server years ago. Which she most notably got away with.
Not just senior officials are routinely trained to deal with sensitive data, but EVERY service member from the lowliest E1 to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Every staffer in Washington gets much of the same training too. You get trained when you join, you get trained annually, you get trained when ever there is a screw up and you also get more training any time you go into an exercise which is classified to any degree. (Which is most of them)
HRC knew she was not supposed to have the e-mail server, knew it was a violation of all the training she had been given and all the documents which she had signed agreeing to abide by the security restrictions which entitled her to access to confidential materials. Just as Trump did. Neither one cared in the slightest, and both think they are above the law because of wealth, power or position. It has nothing to do with being white, and everything to do with their belief in their own power.
A belief, which unfortunately, was proven out in HRC’s case. And sadly I expect to see proven out in Trump’s case as well.
Ah, both-sides-ism. A wonderful way to convince yourself that your guy is not the bad guy. Your guy doesn’t have to be penalized because they all do it.
Keep up the good work, you don’t have to listen to any criticism!
IF your defense is “Someone else did it” you accept guilt.
Here’s a the reality. If she did something illegal, go punish her, simple.
She didn’t, they investigated.
Do you know why what Trump did is WORSE than what Hillary Did?
Not exhaustive but here’s a few simple issues.
#1: When Hillary did it it was Not a Felony. Trump specifically made it a Felony in 2018. He is the one that made the punishment and the crime more severe as part of his attempt to go after her.
#2: This wasn’t even a raid. He was asked to return these documents multiple times and kept not doing it. So a warrant was issued to allow the FBI to go get the things he was already supposed to give back.
He’s the one who screamed raid, he’s the one who made it public. It otherwise would have been a quiet matter with no consequences to him.
Again, you clearly don’t understand my post. It’s not an acceptable defense, it never is or was. I said that they should both be punished, locked up, and treated like criminals.
I never claimed what HRC did was a felony, just that it was illegal. And that’s really all that matters. So she should have been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, just as any service member would be for doing the same thing she did. The fact that she got away with violating the law (Even if it’s not a felony) is unacceptable. She should have been jailed, stripped of her security clearances and removed from any ability to ever have access to secured materials again.
I never claimed that the seizure of materials at Mar Lago was a raid. Where did you get that from? Trump’s lawyer, or Trump himself, lied to officials about having possession of the documents. The FBI entered with due process. No raid at all. What made you think I felt it was a raid?
Both HRC and Trump have committed an illegal act (regardless of it being a felony or not) and should be punished to the fullest extent of the law as any other person would be.
But…but…HILARY! OBAMA!!
Modern GQP misdirection. Never gets old in tRumpverse
Hanna,
I thorough resent your assertion that I am a Trump supporter. It’s highly insulting. NO WHERE in my post did I state that it was alright because HRC did something. In fact I stated that she SHOULD have been punished.
Both HRC and Trump broke the law, they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent. The fact that she was not, and he is not likely to be so, is a failure of the system because of their power and wealth.
To be 100% clear, she should be in jail. He should be in the jail cell next to her.
You’re forgetting one thing. What Hillary did was definitely questionable, but under the law as it was at the time, it’s highly improbable that she could have been convicted of anything, let alone sent to prison, which was why even Trump’s DOJ didn’t prosecute her. It’s also why Trump went to such lengths to change the law. He also seems to forget, as you are, that under the Constitution you can’t change the law and convict someone of something illegal when it was legal when they did it.
I understand that you cannot retroactively prosecute some one, and accept that. But the security rules as written at the time would certainly have allowed for prosecution of Hillary. 65 emails deemed “Secret” and 22 deemed “Top Secret”, and an additional 2,093 emails were designated confidential by the State Department which were taken off of her unsecured e-mail server. This was a violation of the existing violated federal law, specifically 18 U.S. Code § 1924, regarding the unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or materials, which was in existence as of 2012 when I had my last TS/SCI review. So it would certainly have been in effect for Hillary’s actions.
I’ve signed more than enough security forms before my retirement from the Navy, where I actually read all the fine print, to know that there are teeth to the agreements service members, politicians and other appointees sign.
The difficulty, I think, in Hillary’s case was simply that there was insufficient political will to prosecute and that the feeling was that there would be a lot of effort spent for little to no gain, even should they obtain a guilty verdict.