Trump is No Victim - Horowitz

Trump is No Victim - Horowitz

In the wake of the search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago resulting from Donald Trump’s stubborn and lawless refusal to return government documents, many of which contain top secret information, to the National Archives, as required by the 1978 Presidential Records Act, the former president has trotted out his well-worn playbook of claiming to be a victim. At a rally in Wisconsin conducted soon after the raid, Trump pretty much called himself the most persecuted person in our nation’s history.  “A friend of mine recently said that I was the most persecuted person in the history of our country, “Mr. Trump told the crowd at his rally. When I thought about it, I actually felt that he may very well be right.”

 

Mr. Trump’s continually playing the victim, calls to mind the 1970s’ Warren Zevon song, “Poor Poor Pitiful Me,” that was a hit for Linda Ronstadt.  Despite his predictable whining, however, the source of his most recent legal difficulty was created in much the same way nearly all of his other mounting legal problems were; namely, by the former president’s reckless disregard of laws and norms, turbocharged by his reflexive dishonesty.  “Trump may be furious about the search, but he has only himself to blame, wrote the conservative columnist, David French in The Atlantic.

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As the affidavit spells out, the National Archives and the FBI made repeated efforts to persuade the former president to return all the documents for well over a year. The 15 boxes he finally did return contained 184 classified documents including National Defense Information (NDI), which if it ended up in the wrong hands could jeopardize people working for us abroad and sources and methods generally. On top of this, based on an analysis of the documents and the knowledge gained from confidential witnesses, it became evident that despite a subpoena issued for any remaining documents and one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers attesting in writing to the fact that there were no more documents marked classified at Mar-a-Lago, classified documents were still on the property.  That is what triggered the search. The list of items taken during it confirm that there were still classified documents in the former president’s possession.

 

The reason for the search is captured succinctly in the affidavit: “Further, there is probable cause to believe that additional documents that contain classified NDI or that are Presidential records subject to record retention requirements currently remain at the Premises. There is also probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found on the premises.” In fact, The United States Department of Justice provided the federal magistrate who approved the search with probable cause that 3 federal laws, including the Espionage Act, had been violated.

 

As more information has come out, the Republican critics of the search and vocal defenders of Mr. Trump have thinned to his hard-core MAGA allies.  That is because as more facts emerge, it is becoming all too apparent that to defend Mr. Trump in this instance is to defend the indefensible.

 

Still, the tired and misleading refrain of how Donald Trump was mistreated in the Russia probe, so the FBI hasn’t earned the benefit of the doubt, is echoed by some.  It is important to remember that the intensification of the Russia probe was triggered by Trump himself. Even if one dismisses the extensive documented record of Trump’s efforts to obstruct justice, misleading and outright false statements, and his 2016  campaign’s disturbing and inappropriate interactions with Russian intelligence services created in the words of the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee, “a grave counter-intelligence threat,” the inescapable reality is that Donald Trump brought the appointment of a special prosecutor on himself by unethically firing the FBI director James Comey who was investigating him. As a result of Comey’s dismissal, Bob Mueller was appointed by Rod Rosenstein, Trump’s own deputy attorney general. Trump advisor Steve Bannon called the former president’s firing of the then FBI director, “one of the worst mistakes in modern political history.”

 

Whether or not Mr. Trump will be charged due to his serious mishandling of government documents that don’t belong to him, including top secret ones, is very much an open question. It also remains to be determined how much damage has been done to national security due to Mr. Trump’s actions in this case.

 

What is crystal clear, however, is that if Mr. Trump wants to understand why he is in in legal jeopardy, all he needs to do is take a hard look in the mirror.

 

Of course, it is the place the former president is least likely to look, except to admire his own reflection. There lies the heart of the problem.