The federal grand jury investigating disgraced and criminally-indicted former president Donald Trump is meeting again this week to consider new indictments against Trump and, perhaps, his enablers for hiding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and other actions that appear to be outright violations of this nation’s Espionage Act.
Sources close to Special Counsel Jack Smith say indictments are exepected this week and they will be “just the beginning” of Trump’s headlong slide into a toxic crime pond of scandals, lies and, yes, treason.
Andrew Weissmann, the former lead prosecutor for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who found obstruction of justice by Trump his invesgitation that was ignored by Trump Attorney General William Barr, who saw his role was one to protect Trump at all costs says justice is about to slam the door of a waiting jail cell for Trump.
“I’m trying not to use hyperbole, but this is game over, Weissmann says. “There will be an indictment, and it’s hard to see how there will not be a conviction.”
Writes Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin:
When coupled with reports that a Trump lawyer was “waved off” searching the former president’s office, a damning case of wrongful retention of highly sensitive (and likely classified documents) appears to have come together. Trump seems to have confessed that he knew the classification rules, didn’t declassify documents before leaving office and knew that retaining them was illegal.
Moreover, his alleged dissemination of material to others (including allegedly verbally discussing this document with others) can solidify a separate part of the law: the prohibition against sharing and distributing confidential documents. A case of dissemination of classified documents would be so serious as to virtually ensure an indictment.
We don’t know precisely what Trump said or what document if any he had taken, but, in a sense, it does not matter. Let’s say the specific document he is alleged to have possessed didn’t say what Trump said it did. It nevertheless confirms that Trump knew he hadn’t declassified documents and was not supposed to keep any. This obliterates the “declassified in his mind” hooey he and his supporters have claimed. Sharing it with others makes prosecution all the more likely.
Ryan Goodman, a former national security lawyer for the Defense Department, reacted this way: “There it is. Espionage Act.” He pointed to a recently unsealed opinion (ruling the attorney-client privilege was ineffective because of the crime-fraud exception) from Judge Beryl A. Howell that stated: “Other evidence demonstrates that the former president willfully sought to retain classified documents when he was not authorized to do so, and knew it.” This evidence, if true, would fit that description.
—Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post
Trump, of course, continues to lie out his ass, saying he “has done nothing wrong” and blames his woes on others. But his diarrhea of the mouth is his worse enemy. Just about every times he opens it, more proof of his criminal behavior emerges and he confirms what he denies.
Time to excise this cancer in America’s body politics.
Indict the criminal SOB, convict him for all of his many crimes and lock him away to rot in prison and hell.
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