In an event unprecedented in American history, a former U.S. president, protected by U.S. Secret Service agents, and currently running for president, was booked on federal criminal charges Tuesday by U.S. Marshals at the U.S. federal courthouse in Miami, before being taken to be fingerprinted and processed.
Donald Trump pled ‘not guilty’ to all charges.
The charges relate to Trump taking a lot of highly classified documents from the White House after he left office. And once discovered, he gave multiple bizarre reasons for having them.
According to the indictment, the highly sensitive materials Trump kept included documents about overseas nuclear weapons holdings and various military plans.
But they are really all about the fact that he refused to turn many of them over for upwards of 18 months. And I have criticized Trump for doing that.
So, did Hillary Clinton get treated differently? Of course! And is Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) out to get Trump?
Absolutely! That’s a given.
But Trump could still have avoided all this had he behaved differently, before and after he got caught. And that’s important too.
As with Richard Nixon and Watergate, it was about the cover up.
The 37 charges against Trump include violations of the Espionage Act or the willful retention of national security information as well as one count of “conspiracy to obstruct justice,” one count of “withholding a document or record,” one count of “corruptly concealing a document or record,” one count of “concealing a document in a deferral investigation,” one count of “scheme to conceal” and one count of “false statements and representations.”
Based on the evidence represented in the indictment, and from his own words and deeds, it seems that he did do most of the things he is accused of, despite the Team Trump calls that this is only a political prosecution.
I have said before that Trump basically dared the Justice Department to come after him. And I still believe that had Trump simply turned over all the classified materials when they were first requested, this would have likely ended last year without any criminal proceedings.
But Trump didn’t.
The FBI then conducted a very showy surprise raid on the ex-president’s Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, on August 8, 2022. That raid, and the documents recovered there, eventually led to the 37-count indictment that now put Trump where he is.
THE FBI RAID ON MAR-A-LAGO
Many condemned the FBI raid that launched all this as unprecedented and wrong, including me. I argued that it sent a horrible message to the world and looked highly political. (As does the indictment, arrest, and potential trial).
Apparently, the FBI had doubts about the raid as well.
Steven D’Antuono, who left the FBI late last year, explained the FBI-DOJ disagreements over the planning and execution of the Mar-a-Lago search during an interview last week with the House Judiciary Committee.
While he called the back-and-forth between DOJ and the FBI “an everyday discussion,” he noted that it still created “consternation” among the law enforcement officials, reported Politico.
According to the interview transcripts reviewed by Politico, D’Antuono said DOJ wanted the FBI to quickly seize the classified documents from Mar-a-Lago, claiming they could fall into the wrong hands. But the FBI’s Washington Field Office team preferred to seek Trump’s permission, through his attorneys, to search the premises.
The FBI even proposed a plan to surveil Mar-a-Lago in case Trump’s team tried taking any of the disputed papers offsite, according to D’Antuono.
The FBI “had a plan in place to have surveillance around if we needed to,” he said.
“Again, no one was there. So, if they brought in — they – meaning the [former] president’s, you know, people — brought in a big box truck, we would see it, right, and we would have the search warrant in hand and be able to act at that point.”
In the end, DOJ got its way, and they conducted the surprise raid. Fortunately, Trump wasn’t there when it occurred. And that was at least something.
“I didn’t want the spectacle for obvious reasons of why we’re sitting here today. … It’s a reputational risk, right, and that’s the way I looked at it from the Bureau,” reported Politico.
Unfortunately, the FBI has still suffered a great deal of reputational risk, as has the DOJ under Biden. This all stinks as political.
But Trump has played a big part in all this as well.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Clueless Deputy Chief of Space Force Takes Sides in ‘Woke Wars’
ANALYSIS – You would think that a senior U.S. military officer would finally have figured out that they should stay out of the ‘woke wars’
Unfortunately, Lt. Gen. DeAnna Burt, deputy chief of space operations at the U.S. Space Force (USSF), appears to have not gotten the memo.
Even as the Pentagon cracks down on ridiculous Drag Queen shows, and the Congress pushes to eliminate woke policies like taxpayer-funded abortion travel, and ‘diversity’ programs that are more divisive than inclusive, Burt decided now was the time to rail against what she called “anti-LGBTQ+ laws” at the state level.
She made her speech at a Pentagon ‘Pride’ event last week.
Fox News reported that she “claimed that such laws affect her hiring and promotion decisions, sometimes leading her to choose a “less qualified” candidate because of a preferred candidate’s ‘personal circumstances.’”
Yes. She said that.
Fox said that Burt told those attending the event:
Fox News explained:
Most of these GOP-led state laws are perfectly reasonable, and designed to protect unborn children, and their mothers, as well as protect kids being pushed into irreversible transgender medical procedures.
They are also totally outside her purview, and democratically established by state legislatures.
But to Burt, they are so dangerous she prefers to hire less qualified candidates due to their ‘personal circumstances,’ rather than subject them to these states’ laws.
Fox News quoted her as saying:
Which part of ‘don’t get into partisan politics or the culture wars’ doesn’t she understand. And hiring less qualified people for a job based on ‘personal circumstances’ sounds like discrimination to me.
Not to mention horrible leadership, dangerous to national security, and bad for America.
But it’s not just one senior leader at USSF. According to leaked emails, last month, two Navy officials derided critics of the service’s promotion of LGBTQ+ Pride as “bigots” and “a—holes.”
These two ‘Pride Pushers’ reportedly schemed on how to best post a “rainbow wingtip graphic” for LGBTQ+ Pride Month on the Navy social media accounts.
As I wrote about then, the Navy only had one Pride image up on social media for less than a day on June 1st, the start of ‘Pride Month,’ before removing it.
None of the other services posted Pride imagery this year, a stark difference from last year when ‘Pride Month’ began.
This is hopefully part of a broader Pentagon policy to pull out of the ‘woke wars’ and keep partisan, ideological, racial, and sexual politics out of our military.
I noted earlier: “Only the Coast Guard and the National Guard made posts for Pride Month, but neither service changed its profile pictures or header image. Hopefully, they will soon get the memo.”
Well, now I add – these navy officials and Lt. Gen. Burt should also get the memo, or even better, an invitation to a Congressional hearing to explain themselves.
It’s time to focus on real wars, not woke ones.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.