How many Republicans have sworn up and down that Trump had declassified all the papers he removed from the White House? Now he’s on tape admitting that that was a lie.
This is a basic requirement of Anglo-Saxon law. Otherwise, targets of investigations would fire up the shredding machines, evidence would disappear, and the legal system would grind to a halt.
Just last year, a lawyer in the U.K. was ordered to pay more than $700,000 for telling an IT manager to “burn” a message app in response to a search warrant for electronic communications. He wanted the messages destroyed for purely personal reasons, having nothing to do with the case.
But as an Above the Law column remarked at the time: “[H]ere’s a free tip [to lawyers] that is guaranteed to make your practice better: don’t tell clients to ‘burn’ evidence — yes, even if the contents are potentially embarrassing.”
Trump’s argument that he had a right to hide these documents from the government is the equivalent of Democrats’ “EVERYBODY DOES IT!” defense of Bill Clinton’s perjury in the Paula Jones case. (Fine, you’ve convinced me: All Democrats engage in oral sex with interns young enough to be their daughters.)
Like Trump, Clinton thought the underlying lawsuit against him was a political hit job, nobody’s business, his “private life.” So he perjured himself dozens of times during his sworn deposition.
President Bill Clinton shakes his finger as he lies about not having sex with Monica Lewinsky. “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” Clinton said. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton stands by her man in the White House Roosevelt Room. (Harry Hamburg/NY Daily News via Getty Images)
After a DNA-stained blue dress proved he’d lied under oath, every single Supreme Court justice boycotted Clinton’s next state of the union address. They’d react the same way to Trump’s obstruction today. You can’t have a legal system if people lie under oath and defy subpoenas. It’s unfathomable that a president or ex-president would do these things.
Clinton’s criminal case ended with a deal. In exchange for not going to trial, he (finally) produced a “forthright admission that he gave false testimony under oath” — as The Washington Post put it — accepted a five year suspension of his law license, paid $25,000 in fees, and agreed not to request reimbursement of his legal fees. He also paid Paula Jones $850,000 and another $90,000 to her lawyers for contempt, described by The New York Times as “part of the unprecedented finding of contempt of court against a President of the United States by a Federal judge.”
Trump’s case could end with something like that, or it could end with a report, reciting his crimes, but declining to prosecute, as happened to Hillary.
But it won’t, principally because prosecuting Trump helps Biden get reelected by revving up the Trump crazies, and — with any luck — winning him the nomination, rather than a sane person who could point out that Joe is visibly decomposing before our eyes, Kamala is an imbecile, and their combined track record is appalling.
Trump’s argument isn’t that he didn’t do it, but deflection. What about Hillary? What about Hunter Biden? It’s a double standard!
YOU DIDN’T ALREADY KNOW THERE WAS A DOUBLE STANDARD???
Any Republican who thought he could get away with doing something illegal because Democrats did it first is too stupid to be our champion, much less the Republican nominee for president.
You want to do something about the double standard, right-wingers? Run someone who enrages the left by winning, not by constantly creating legal messes benefiting no one but himself.