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The defeated former president's indictment now shifts into the courtroom. Last Monday evening, I was reminded by one of the talking heads on MSNBC that when lawyers don't have the evidence on their side, they pound home the law and when they don't have the law on their side, they pound home the evidence, but when they have neither the evidence nor the law on their side, they just pound on the desk.
This is what is going to happen in the indicted former
president's trial by the defense in an attempt to create reasonable doubt in
the mind of at least one juror. Such desk pounding invites objections by the
prosecution and that is where the judge on the bench becomes important.
JL
* * *
Lock
Her Him Up!
Conviction Would Send a Powerful Message
Barbara
McQuade, former Federal prosecutor and now on the faculty of the University of
Michigan’s law school, appears frequently on MSNBC which published the
following column by her on its website on June 13.
The only conclusion that I can draw from it is that the national security of the United States of America is in great danger until the defeated and now indicted former president is locked up and the key thrown away. House arrest or any arrangement allowing outside contact would be dangerous.
He
is a walking time bomb so long as he can disclose to others, whether convicted
or not, classified information which might endanger the nation. Solitary confinement would not be necessary
but great care should be taken in assigning him a cellmate. A robot would be fine.
But if convicted, his avenues of communication must be drastically
limited. The Watergate ‘plumbers’ who
went to jail in President Nixon’s time were not in the indicted forty-fifth
president’s class because national security was not an issue then, just
politics.
(In
many foreign countries, and among criminals even in this country, those
possessing damning information sometimes strangely disappear or conveniently
die from a suddenly contracted fatal disease. For example, in regard to the
assassination of JFK, check out the unexpected deaths of columnist Dorothy
Kilgallen and of Jack Ruby, killer of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. Neither ever lived to say all that they knew. Nothing like that will happen to the indicted
former president but I would watch the papers carefully for any items about the
health of likely witnesses.)
* *
June
13, 2023, 6:00 AM EDT
“The indictment returned by a federal grand
jury in Florida last week includes one inescapable conclusion — former
President Donald Trump is a triple threat to the national security of the
U.S.
Trump’s 37 counts
allege violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice, false
statements and conspiracy. The indictment describes audacious conduct, alleging
he lied to the National Archives, the Justice Department and even his own
lawyers and orchestrated the concealment of boxes of documents when the Justice
Department came to visit. But the language that most stood out to me as a
former national security prosecutor related to the descriptions of the documents
themselves. Of course, special prosecutor Jack Smith cannot reveal in detail
the sensitive information within these records, but even the general nature of
the secrets Trump allegedly stored across
Mar-a-Lago,
including in a bathroom and a ballroom, is bone-chilling.
According to the
indictment, the documents included information about:
The defense and
weapons capabilities of both the U.S. and foreign countries.
U.S. nuclear
programs.
Potential
vulnerabilities of the U.S. and its allies to military attack.
Plans for possible
retaliation in response to a foreign attack.
Trump has, of course,
denied that he did anything wrong and minimized his gross abuse of power as the
“boxes hoax.” One of his lawyers has compared
Trump’s retention of national secrets to having an overdue library book. But clearly, this case is about
far more than an administrative slip-up.
Instead, the
indictment charges Trump with misconduct that recklessly placed our national
security and foreign relations and the safety of the U.S. military and
intelligence community in danger. Some of the documents Trump allegedly
retained were marked “top secret,” designating information that, if disclosed,
could cause exceptionally grave harm to the national security.
The indictment is a
first step toward accountability for Trump’s alleged abuse of power. But, for a
number of reasons, he will remain a threat until he is convicted — and perhaps
even beyond that.
First, the indictment
demonstrates the risk Trump poses to our country as a former president. As
commander-in-chief, Trump was entrusted with knowledge of every aspect of our
national security, from the placement of missiles to the nuclear codes. His
reckless storage of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago demonstrates his
inability to handle this knowledge responsibly. The resort, which the Justice
Department says hosted “more than 150 social events that together drew tens of
thousands of guests” during the relevant period, was a potential target for
foreign intelligence operations. (In 2019, NBC News reported that a Chinese citizen was arrested at the club with “two
passports, four cellphones, a laptop, an external hard drive and a thumb drive
containing computer malware.”)
In fact, the
indictment alleges that Trump has already shared national defense information
with a writer, a publisher, two staffers and a representative of his political
action committee — none of whom had the required security clearances. If Trump is convicted, a
compelling case could be made for his imprisonment and
a sentencing condition that limits his ability to communicate sensitive secrets
to the outside world to limit further damage.
If Trump were to
become president again in 2024, foreign allies might be unwilling to share
their sensitive intelligence with us.
Second, Trump poses a threat to our national security as
a defendant. In criminal cases involving classified information, a defendant
sometimes will engage in a practice
known as “graymail,” threatening to reveal
sensitive national secrets if the government persists in the prosecution. For
this reason, former government employees often get lenient plea deals to avoid
the disclosure of government secrets at trial.
The Classified Information Procedures
Act creates some
mechanisms to safeguard such material, such as protective orders during
discovery and at trial. But in light of Trump’s access — not to mention his
win-at-all-costs mentality — CIPA’s protections feel too thin. Because
Trump has already seen all of the documents noted in the indictment, there is a
risk that he will share their contents with people unauthorized to see them or
threaten to do so unless the charges are dropped or favorably resolved.
And finally, Trump as
candidate for president in 2024 is a danger to our national security. The U.S.
intelligence community depends on foreign allies to share information with us,
and we do the same for them. A condition of receiving sensitive information
from other countries is that we promise to safeguard it from disclosure.
According to the
indictment, in December 2021, the contents of several of Trump’s boxes had
spilled on the floor in a storage room. Among the documents on the floor was
one marked “FVEY,” indicating that the information was releasable only to the
Five Eyes alliance of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and
the U.S. Most of us would be reluctant to lend a novel to a friend who treated
our possessions with such contempt, let alone our most private secrets.
If Trump were to
become president again in January 2025, foreign allies might be unwilling to
share their sensitive intelligence with us. And if we stop receiving valuable
intelligence from allies, we will be in the dark about important information
with which to make decisions about our military and security interests.
At his news briefing announcing the indictment,
Smith emphasized that members of our intelligence community and armed forces
“dedicate their lives to protecting our nation and its people.” Violations of
the laws that protect national defense information “put our nation at risk.”
Even a Trump trial and conviction may not prevent him from wreaking further
havoc, but they can send a powerful message that he can be held criminally
accountable and deter others who might follow his lawless example.”
Barbara McQuade is a former Michigan U.S. attorney and legal
analyst.
(For
those who are sticklers for detail, a link to an actual copy of all 37 counts
in the indictment is available at https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2023-06-09/read-full-text-of-donald-trumps-indictment or by clicking here, as it appeared on the website of the US
News & World Report magazine. )
JL
* * *
And What Happens After
Conviction?
Two questions: (1) How important is it to Americans today to try to avoid the potential for internal conflict that might result from the conviction and sentencing of the former president? (2) How important is that potential to those who must run for office?
We answered these questions incorrectly after
the Civil War and Watergate with unfortunate results, producing a ‘botched’
Reconstruction and the post-Nixon ‘Tea Party,’ followed by its even more
undemocratic successors who we saw marching in Charlottesville and now see
daily contaminating the House of Representatives. Yet we survived. Sort of, anyway. The 'documents' case is a
'slam dunk' but other misdeeds of the forty-fifth president, not among the charges, are worse. While we must insist that justice prevail, we
must be aware of the consequences that might follow.
'Chickening out,' as was done after the Civil War
and after Watergate, is not an option. That
is when democracy will be on the line and challenged by the political equivalent
of 'comfort food' which while tasty may not be particularly nourishing. Let the trials begin and the chips fly where
they may.
 |
| Political Comfort Food is Unacceptable |
JL
* * *
Switching Gears, What
is Needed to Fully Restore Democracy in the United States
First
of all, it requires adding checks and balances to the Judicial branch of our government. They are present elsewhere in the
Constitution and work fairly well in the Legislative and Executive branches but
the Supreme Court and lower Federal courts lack them. Lifetime tenure for Supreme Court Justices and
lower court judges must go, with either a mandatory retirement age or term
limits or both. Dependence on
presidential nominations and Senate confirmation are not enough to produce an honest
Court.
The
role of State governments, imbedded in the Constitution, must be refigured as well. That is very important.
Back in 1789, the new Federal government was seen as being a newborn creature rearing
its head in opposition to existing State governments. That's why we have the
2nd and 10th Amendments, the obsolete Electoral College and an intentionally
unrepresentative Senate. All of these were intended to protect the rights of
the original thirteen States. This is
what the ‘Federalist Papers’ were all about and the core of the disagreement
between the followers of James Madison and those of Alexander Hamilton.
Some still want it Madison’s way, protecting States’ rights, and many disagree, believing States’ rights to be at the root of many of our present problems, tracing it back to their role in the unmentioned protection of slavery in the Constitution.
The Federal-State
dichotomy is well illustrated by the SCOTUS calendar being filled with cases
resolving State or local laws that conflict with Federal laws. Guns, abortions, gerrymandering and voting
rights are conspicuous areas of conflict. This
area of dispute is coming to a head right now as some right-wing jurists are starting
to advocate what is called 'Independent State Legislature’ theory, giving
States pre-eminence over the Federal Government. The Constitution’s language is sufficiently
vague to give this kind of thinking credibility for those who look for it
there.
Should
Independent State Legislature theory prevail, it will require the nation's name
to be changed to the ‘DIS-United States of America,’ and move us back to the
days of the failed Articles of Confederation, with George III waiting for his
erstwhile colonies to throw in the towel. (Of course, today’s monarch, Charles
III, would be more understanding, and probably wouldn’t want us back.) These are the challenges facing the next few
generations. Meeting them will put
democracy back on the right track.
JL
*
* *
“God Save the Queen, Man”
Some
who were puzzled by President Biden’s ‘God save the Queen, Man,’ remark, made
in Connecticut the other day after presenting the need for gun control
legislation, missed his point.
‘God
Save the Queen,’ now changed to ‘God Save the King,’ is the British national
anthem, sometimes sung at the closing (as well as at the opening) of ceremonial
events there. Biden’s words followed his
instructions to the crowd as to how to pose themselves to be in group
photographs with him, the whole process of which he minimized with his remark, "I will stand in front of each
section – no, I really mean it -- if you can see the camera, they can see you.
It is the least consequential part of this whole meeting for you, I promise."
And after thusly emphasizing the
unimportance of the photography when compared to his promising to work for gun
control, he added, “God Save the Queen, Man,” which was his sharp way of
saying, ‘That’s it. We’re done. Enough Already, Guys!’
Charles III has not been on the throne long
enough for Joe to revise his colloquialisms.
Most of those perplexed by or questioning what he said are not as sharp
as the President. They should ‘Stop
already, Man!’
JL
*
* *
A Different Kind of Letter
Here’s the text of a letter I have sent to the Palm Beach Post. It was motivated by a discussion I had with a follower of Jackspotpourri who pointed out that partisan articles and letters to newspapers usually make those who agree with them stronger in their existing convictions, but have little effect on those who believe otherwise, changing no minds.
My letter, which I doubt the Post will publish, attempts to actually have some effect on voters with whom I disagree. I will let you know if they publish it. The letter:
‘Conjecture on the Post's Opinion page about the 2024 Republican presidential nominee causes me to wonder that If former president Trump ends up with the nomination, will the support of the unsuccessful candidates be any more than lukewarm, not only because of his legal baggage but because of his personal insults to some of them in the past, words they once chose to ignore but may not in 2024. On the other hand, if another Republican manages to get the G.O.P. nomination, will Trump’s backers provide any more than just lukewarm support, feeling that the Party had betrayed him by denying him the nomination?’
JL
*
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Housekeeping on the Blog
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)
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There’s
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Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com, or
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Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you
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Have a nice day!
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