Donald Trump pleaded not guilty in Miami’s Wilkie D. Ferguson Courthouse Tuesday to 37 charges related to classified documents he allegedly kept illegally after he left the White House.
The federal indictment of a former president comes as a surreal first in American history. Important figures making off with classified material, unfortunately, does not.
James Comey, the former director of the FBI, six years ago gave classified material to the New York Times through the intermediary of a friend on the faculty of the Columbia Law School. Comey, left unpursued by the Justice Department in which he once held a high position, nevertheless last week judged the indictment of Trump for the same offense: “A good day for the rule of law.”
Is it “a good day for the rule of law” when Donald Trump’s main political enemies — Comey, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden — all abscond with classified material without legal repercussions, but the former president faces 400 years in prison?
Put another way, Trump faces the same punishment as the Want-Ad Killer — who died earlier this year after serving an eighth of that sentence — a rapist and/or murderer of known victims from age 13 to 58. Comey, Clinton, and Biden, in contrast to Trump, did not, and will not, even face misdemeanor charges.
Preposterously different legal responses to the same underlying offense — acting as though classified documents belonging to the federal government belong to you — does not represent a win for the rule of law. It garishly displays that many in with the in-crowd indeed stand above the law.
Juxtapose this double standard at the risk of enduring the wrath of partisans, including ones rechristened “journalists.”
When James Trusty invoked Biden taking classified documents from a SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility), George Stephanopoulos played dumb. “What are you talking about, sir?” he indignantly asked Sunday. “What are you talking about? That is a ridiculous statement.”
True statements become ridiculous statements to partisans. Classified documents from Biden’s days in the Senate, whose members view such material in SCIFs, turned up at his Wilmington, Delaware, home during a Justice Department search in January.
Trump supporters, past and present, ask a legitimate, say-it-ain’t-so-Joe question: How could he sink to the level of Comey, Clinton, and Biden?
A plausible answer comes from the audio evidence prosecutors aim to use against the former president.
“Key audio in the case captured Trump trying to prove his side of the story after a New Yorker article detailed [Gen. Mark] Milley’s attempts to prevent the president from attacking Iran during his final days in the White House,” Brad Dress reports at the Hill. “Trump claimed he had a document about a ‘plan of attack’ on Iran that showed it was Milley’s idea, and he admitted he knew the document was secret and not declassified by him, contradicting some of his claims in the case. It’s unclear whether the document in question exists.”
This petty motive of making oneself look like a new dime while making one’s enemies look like one of those green pennies explains half of all leaks. We do not know the specifics regarding the classified documents Joe Biden stored in his home’s garage, office’s closet, and points beyond, and the exact nature of the classified material on Hillary Clinton’s server eludes us, too.
But common sense dictates, for instance, that motivations for Sandy Berger buffoonishly stuffing classified documents in his socks and trousers to later destroy stemmed from a wish to shield the administration of Bill Clinton, on whose request he went to the National Archives, from evidence of failing to respond to repeated warnings about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. And we know that in Comey’s case, he took classified material to make himself look better and Trump look worse in the matter of Gen. Mike Flynn, fired because of a matter that his supporters regard as entrapment.
Possibly Trump did the same and did so understanding that his enemies played the game that way. He gravely misunderstood the rules of the game, which do not apply to some players, such as the above-the-law former director of the FBI.
“Former Director Comey failed to live up to this responsibility,” the inspector general of the Justice Department explained in 2019. “By not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment, and by using it to create public pressure for official action, Comey set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees—and the many thousands more former FBI employees—who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information. Comey said he was compelled to take these actions ‘if I love this country…and I love the Department of Justice, and I love the FBI.’ However, were current or former FBI employees to follow the former Director’s example and disclose sensitive information in service of their own strongly held personal convictions, the FBI would be unable to dispatch its law enforcement duties properly.”
Undoubtedly, a swamp drainer could offer the same rationalization for keeping classified material that a swamp thing did — he loves his country — for releasing it. But that only works for those who belong to the club. Membership has its privileges.