Breaking News Bulletins have been gushing out of a firehose this past week, so I'm skipping the usual Sneak Peek this week to bring you a Special Breaking Cartoon.
Republicans in Congress, the presidential race, and the media responded immediately to the indictment of Donald CapsLock Trump over the classified documents he has been hoarding — and hiding — at Mar-a-Lago by leaping to his defense.
Typical was this tweet from DeSantis: “The weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society. We have for years witnessed an uneven application of the law depending upon political affiliation.”
But the most egregious offender this weekend was arguably the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, the bible of unfettered free-market capitalism, which has taken the notion that “consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds” to unprecedented heights. The Rupert Murdoch-owned paper that in 2001 argued that Bill Clinton should be indicted over the alleged Monica Lewinsky perjury, thus “upholding the principle that even Presidents and ex-Presidents are not above the law,” and which called in 2016 for criminal charges against candidate Hillary Clinton over her emails has had an abrupt change of heart.
“It was once unthinkable in America that the government’s awesome power of prosecution would be turned on a political opponent,” the WSJ wrote in an editorial this week. “That seal has now been broken. It didn’t need to be.” The piece turns on its head what was actually unthinkable before this week: that federal laws that are constantly charged against everyday citizens could be applied to an ex-president.
How dare the Justice Department issue charges against a Republican former president just for refusing to turn over Top Secret papers that belong to the government! It's a witch hunt! What about the papers Joe Biden returned when they turned up in his garage? What about Hunter Biden's laptop? What about Barack Obama's tan suit? What about Vince Foster? What about Naomi?
And of course, What about Hillary's emails?
Republicans in Congress, even those citing Hillary Clinton, have somehow forgotten that it was they who passed, and Trump who signed, a law turning mishandling of government documents from a misdemeanor to a felony. They did so after grilling Clinton in front of a congressional committee for eleven hours and coming up with nothing they could prosecute her for. (Want to talk about "weaponization of the federal government," Speaker McCarthy?)
So Prosecutor Jack Smith was compelled to present the grand jury's case to the general public before a trial jury could be empaneled. He released testimony that Trump had Mar-a-Lago employees spirit documents away from Mar-a-Lago when the feds were on their way to reclaim them; that Trump had shown off classified documents to guests; that pool water had been pumped into a room in which more documents were stored; that Trump had suggested that his lawyers perjure themselves.
And the photographs! Boxes of documents stored on the Mar-a-Lago ballroom stage. In a room with a high-volume copier. In a bathroom. In the shower. Highly classified, top secret documents mixed in willy-nilly with newspaper and magazine clippings.
Republicans are, however, damned right in complaining that the this is all so unprecedented.
In a conventional White House not consumed with efforts to overthrow an election, the White House Counsel’s Office and relevant personnel would have sorted through the president’s records weeks before Inauguration Day and ensured that any classified records were properly secured. Reporting indicates that Trump’s White House was focused on “other matters” until the final days of Trump’s presidency, and the resulting failure to separate out classified records may have been the result.
No comments:
Post a Comment