Thursday, September 01, 2022
PMT: The Trump Documents
Donald Trump has poked the bear by claiming wrongdoing by the DOJ in the search of his home, and that may well prove to be a serious mistake.
The DOJ has one big tool: the discretion to charge people with crimes. The federal penal code is so deep and wide that it is pretty easy to charge people with crimes in multiple ways for a single act. DOJ lawyers get to choose when to go to the toolbox, and which tools to take out. The saw or the chisel?
Yes, this is a much more perilous situation for Donald Trump than those he has faced in the past. He could be charged by a federal grand jury-- and that could happen sooner than people think. I would not be surprised to see an indictment in October... but Donald Trump will be surprised.
There are certain activities-- selling drugs, taking home secret and classified government information after leaving government service-- that can be charged multiple ways, or not at all. If you want to be charged, challenging the credibility of the DOJ is the way to go. And that is where Trump has gone.
But what about Hillary Clinton's emails?
Well, I said at the time that setting up a server in a bathtub at home to handle government communication as Secretary of State was a mistake and possibly criminal. And you'll remember that Jim Comey said pretty much the same thing when he said they were choosing not to charge.
So what's different? Well, in one case, Trump's, we know what the secret information was (or at least the FBI does). And Trump, unlike Clinton chose to rage against the prosecutors.
It may not be a principled way to choose who to charge, but no one near Trump could apparently convince him that it's the way the world works.
