There is no doubt that Democrats are using their weaponized federal government to target Donald Trump over allegations no Democrat would ever face consequences for.
That’s a given at this point.
But former Trump Attorney General William Barr’s take on the former President’s latest indictment will leave you flabbergasted.
It’s not great
After Special Counsel Jack Smith officially filed his 37-count indictment against former President Donald Trump, Democrats and Never-Trump Republicans rushed to push the narrative that his alleged mishandling of classified documents was the most treasonous act since that coward Benedict Arnold.
Of course, throughout their frenzied efforts to establish control over the narrative, the ruling class elites and their media allies conveniently omitted the fact that President Joe Biden was found to be in possession of his own stash of classified documents he took as a Senator and Vice President – neither of which have the same power over classified documents as a President.
But after the indictment against Trump was unsealed, it became pretty clear that the entire situation was going to be a much more difficult uphill battle for the former President than most conservatives expected – that is, if the evidence included in the indictment is real.
That’s largely because the indictment claims that investigators have Trump on audio recording showing off the documents to an individual without security clearance and admitting, “As President, I could have declassified it. Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
Obviously, it’s important to note that those audio recordings have yet to be released publicly, so it’s not a given the reporting on the tapes is accurate, but if it turns out to be, Trump’s defense that as President he had the power to do whatever he wanted with classified documents through the Presidential Records Act would go completely out the window.
At the same time, even if the tapes aren’t the slam dunk Democrats claim them to be, and Trump can use the Presidential Records defense, it doesn’t exactly help with the obstruction of justice charges against him – even though it’s a total witch hunt, and you’re totally innocent, you just have to comply with criminal investigations.
And during a recent interview with CBS News’ Face the Nation, Trump’s own former Attorney General William Barr – who obviously hasn’t been the former President’s biggest fan since leaving office – pointed out that even though Trump “has been the victim of unfair witch hunts in the past,” he may have created a bit of a mess for himself with this one.
“No legal basis”
“But that doesn’t obviate the fact that he’s also a fundamentally flawed person who engages in reckless conduct, and that leads to situations, calamitous situations like this, which are very destructive and hurt any political cause he’s associated with,” Barr claimed. “And this was a case, entirely of his own making. He had no right to those documents. The government tried for over a year, quietly and with respect, to get them back, which was essential that they do, and he jerked them around.”
Barr added that Trump had “no legal basis” for taking the documents, which reportedly contained information about America’s nuclear weapons program, U.S. defense capabilities, potential U.S. vulnerabilities, and retaliation plans in the event the U.S. is attacked.
He also suggested that even without the reported audio recordings of the former President, the Presidential Records Act defense is lacking because the “whole purpose” of enacting the statute post-Watergate was “to stop Presidents from taking official documents out of the White House.”
Former Trump loyalist turned critic Ann Coulter echoed Barr’s sentiment in a recent op-ed for Breitbart.
“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,” Coulter wrote. “(Fine, you’ve convinced me: All Democrats engage in oral sex with interns young enough to be their daughters.)”
“Trump’s argument isn’t that he didn’t do it, but deflection,” she added. “What about Hillary? What about Hunter Biden? It’s a double standard! YOU DIDN’T ALREADY KNOW THERE WAS A DOUBLE STANDARD???”
At the end of the day, it’s obvious that Democrats seized on this classified documents issue for the sole purpose of going after Trump – actions they would have decried had the shoe been on the other foot.
But Donald Trump also gave Democrats the opening and made things much, much harder on himself than he ever had to make it.
And now, Democrats and Never-Trumpers have the chance to actually inflict real damage on him.
