Resolved: Lock Him Up
I confess, Trump has been treated harshly by our country, me included.
The media has castigated him, politicians on both sides of the aisle have expressed disdain for him, and even Tucker Carlson, the conservative media darling, bemoaned in a leaked text “I hate him passionately.”
Referring to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, Special Counsel John Durham concluded that the FBI acted with reckless political partisanship, that they were perhaps too eager to open an investigation into Trump and his team due to their bias against him.
And now, for the first time in US History, a former president is facing not 1, not 2, but 91 felony charges across two federal and two separate state cases.
Trump supporters across the country are upset, and understandably so. At cursory glance, it would seem obvious, almost self-evident that the former president has not been treated harshly by the institutions of this country.
But is “harsh” the same as “unfair”?
Should Trump’s treatment be truly that shocking?
Is it actually unfair, or is this just a convenient lie Trump supporters tell themselves to cope with a historically corrupt leader?
I’ll be honest, not many things baffle me more than conservative’s confused indignation for Trump’s treatment in this country.
Does he have many enemies? Yes, of course, but didn’t come to Washington to make them? Was his explicit goal not to “drain the swamp”? Did he also not make an enemy out of former personal attorney’s, like Michael Cohen, former campaign staff and managers, like Brad Parscale and Bill Stepien, former government appointed officials, like his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, even his own Attorney General, William Barr, former political allies like Jeff Sessions, Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan, and countless others both in and outside of his administration that he alone deemed disloyal? Hell, Trump even attacked Fox News for calling the Arizona race on election night for daring to do their jobs.
Is it really surprising that a man who makes so many enemies would have so few friends?
Aside from turning allies to enemies, Trump’s also abused both his rhetoric as a candidate and his powers in office in ways that, while not always illegal, are certainly morally reprehensible.
Is it any wonder that those in this country might have questioned Trump’s allegiance to this country when he was on TV calling for Russia to release 30,000 e-mails from Hillary Clinton’s servers? Does it give no pause that he did this while at the same time working with Roger Stone to coordinate media dumps from Wikileaks that were obtained from DNC servers by Russian hackers? Trump even pardoned Paul Manafort, a man so connected to Russia that a Republican lead Senate Intelligence Committee considered him a grave threat, and believed Russia was acquiring information about Trump’s campaign through him. And yes, in case you were wondering, this is same Paul Manafort who was charged with defrauding the US Government, witness tampering and obstruction of justice. And yes, the very same Paul Manafort whom Trump saw fit to reward his loyalty by pardoning him before leaving office.
Regardless of the personal feelings we may have about Trump, and by we, I mean me, I’m not here to talk about the ethics, or lack thereof, of Donald Trump, nor my personal dislike - I think I had hatred written here initially - for the man. I’m here to argue the affirmative that he ought to be in prison.
So, Trump’s vicious violations of norms and his penchant for pardoning all of those close to him of felonious crimes aside, Trump’s disdain for the rule of law and his criminal conduct as president are worthy of legal condemnation. While many are willing to support Trump’s aggressive rhetoric on social media, I find that those who support him in his criminal cases only do so out of ignorance, deliberate or otherwise, of the facts of said cases.
So let’s review those facts.
The first matter is a simple one, the federal classified documents case in Mar-a-Lago.
In March of 2021, NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration, requested from Donald Trump he return boxes and boxes of potentially classified material that he had personally overseen removed from the White House and stored in his resort at Mar-a-Lago. Trump repeatedly refused these requests, and only returned 15 of these boxes almost a year later in January of 2022 after repeated badgering. These were not all of the boxes with classified materials that Trump had taken with him, only a few boxes that Trump had his employee, Walt Nauta, go through first to see what he felt like sending back. After NARA discovered classified material in said boxes on February 9th, of 2022, the case was referred to the DoJ, leading the FBI to open an investigation in March.
Donald Trump stored this material, knowing it was classified, and knowing that Mar-a-Lago was not an approved storage facility for said information. Some of information Trump retained were national defense secrets, in a club that was accessed by tens of thousands of members and guests in the duration of its storage. He did this despite repeated requests to return it, and once he realized federal agencies were looking for it, he instructed multiple employees and legal counsel to move around and hide the boxes in order to obscure what material he still possessed, all while lying to investigators about the classified material.
He also stands accused of showing off some of this classified material to reporters and journalists who would come by for interviews, with two cases being mentioned directly in the indictments. In one of these instances, there exists an audio-recording of Trump meeting with an interview team, none of whom possessed any security clearances. Trump braggadociously showed some of the documents off, describing a “plan of attack” that he claimed was prepared for him by the Department of Defense and a senior military official, most likely to exonerate him from claims of being a war hawk. Trump himself told the individuals that the plan was “highly confidential .. and “secret.” He also mentioned that ”as president he could have declassified it,’” and, “Now he can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
Under 18 USC 793(e), the willful retention of national defense information is a crime. Of this, Trump is guilty.
Under 18 USC 1512(k), the deliberate obstruction of any federal investigation is also crime. Trump’s orders to his employees to hide information from his own lawyers or federal investigators is a deliberate obstruction of said investigators’ investigation. Of this, Trump is also guilty.
And what of the election fraud case?
18 USC 371 speak of two or more people conspiring either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, and 18 U.S.C. 241 makes it unlawful for two or more people to agree to injure, threaten, or intimidate a person in the United States in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States.
Did Trump conspire against our rights as Americans to have our votes counted?
Well, let’s be clear about what needs to be proven and what doesn’t.
Many claim that as long as Trump truly believed election fraud at a level that was outcome determinative, he was within his right to do, I guess, literally he wanted to do.
Fortunately, this is not how the real world works. Conviction with no adherence to rule of law is simply vigilantism.
Many people also speak of “intent”, but intent is not really at issue in the case that Jack Smith has brought to federal court. Or rather, not the “intent” of whether or not he believes the election was stolen.
Take, for example, the false elector plot that Trump and his cronies concocted. Donald Trump and his team had 7 different groups of citizens in 7 different states affirm that they were in fact the duly appointed electors, authorized to transmit their state’s electoral college vote through NARA to Congress. This was a lie. They were not appointed by the state assemblies. They did not meet in the state capitols. And surely, they were not authorized to transmit those electoral votes under false pretenses to Congress to be counted on January 6th.
Trump’s intent only matters insofar as he compelled these citizens to gather and lie about being the duly appointed state electors. They were not. Trump and his team compelled them to lie.
It may be that Donald Trump rightfully thought he had won the election, and that he thought there was corruption that the states simply hadn’t thoroughly investigated yet. Even if that were the case, though, it is not lawful for Trump and his team to compel others to lie about being state electors in the hope that their electoral votes will be counted as opposed to the legally certified electors. This is fraud.
The same is true with the infamous call he placed to Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger, encouraging him to find 11,000 votes to help him flip the state. Even if he did believe there was election fraud, that gave him no right to call any election officials or state assemblies to pressure them to change the outcome of their elections.
And what of 18 USC 1512? Do we believe that Trump attempted to corruptly obstruct an official proceeding?
Well, we know he did. We know that Trump attempted to bully his own vice president into accepting the fraudulent elector slates, knowing they were sent under false pretense. This happened multiple times in the days and weeks proceeding January 6th. When rebuffed on a phone call on Christmas, Trump even seemed to admit to Pence that he knew he was being deceitful, telling him that he was “too honest” for refusing his plot. Again, even if Trump had thought there was outcome determinative election fraud, this was clearly not the legally acceptable avenue to address his grievances.
Assuming even half the accusations laid out in these indictments are true, certainly Trump should be convicted of the aforementioned crimes, many of which carry with them prison sentences.
Donald Trump acts as though he lives above the law, as though the Constitution and the American government exists not just beneath him, but at his whim and pleasure, only necessary when convenient to him, and cast aside when it hampers his ambitions. It is important to send a message not just to Trump, nor those that support him, but to all future presidents and their supporters that this sort of injustice will not be tolerated.
As Americans, we should not accept that the armor of “ex-president” be protective against the sword of justice.
Or, said more simply, lock him up.