AG Report 6.15.2023
Trump’s Indictment
On the Legal issues: Trump was indicted in Miami this week for his alleged actions in the federal documents case. This is now Trump’s second indictment, with two other indictments potentially coming down the pike: the federal Jan. 6th case in D.C. and the state election case in Georgia.
I was very vocal about the first indictment (the Bragg case) being political, and one could argue about selective prosecution in the other cases. But either way, Trump is in serious legal peril. The selective prosecution argument is meant to influence public opinion, but it does not change whether Trump’s behavior constituted a criminal act. After reading the indictment and mountain of evidence against him in the documents case, it’s very hard to conclude that Trump will avoid conviction.
The details are very damning. Not only did Trump consistently mishandle documents that were critical to national security, including storing them in random places around Mar-a-Lago and showing them to various people who he admittedly knew were not authorized to see them, but he also actively obstructed the efforts to recover such documents.
It’s unclear why Trump refused to hand over the documents after federal authorities asked for them, but that’s a crime under 18 U.S. Code § 793. The Trump legal defense appears to be focused on the Presidential Records Act, but National Review’s Andrew McCarthy does a good job explaining why those arguments are not convincing. More importantly, there’s extensive evidence that Trump enlisted help from others to enact several schemes to lie about the documents and hinder efforts to recover them. He ignored good legal advice from his attorneys and then made them unwitting co-conspirators in his obstruction efforts. It is worth noting that Trump was not charged for withholding the documents that were returned prior to the May 11th, 2022 subpoena. For a normal defendant, this would be the time to seek a deal.
Two-Tiered Justice: With Trump’s behavior beyond excusing, his defenders have taken to arguing that the pursuit of him is an injustice since Hillary Clinton was never charged. Clinton should have been charged and was clearly given a pass because of her status as the Democrat nominee. However, letting one Republican billionaire politician get away with criminal behavior because one millionaire Democrat politician was given a pass isn’t how you prevent a two-tiered justice system, it’s how you perpetuate it.
A navy officer who mishandles national security documents or a regular Joe who tries to obstruct an FBI investigation by destroying evidence will never avoid prosecution just because Hillary Clinton once did. It’s also worth reminding people that it was Donald Trump who decided not to pursue a special prosecutor to look further into Hillary’s actions after he was elected because he did not want to “hurt the Clintons.” Almost as soon as Trump won the election, he openly said he was no longer interested in holding Hillary Clinton accountable for her actions. That’s because Trump actually admires elite corrupt politicians and wants them held to a different standard. It’s why he even pardoned corrupt Democrats like Rod Blagojevich, Kwame Kilpatrick, and Charles Kushner.
If you want actual justice, you need to reform the legal bureaucracy to ensure it pursues and prosecutes everyone guilty of serious criminal activity, not insist that it gives a pass to rich politicians on either side.
On the Political Issues: Much of the next year and a half will center on the details of these cases. If Trump is the nominee, that will be the central issue of the election. And while a majority of the country does not like the job Joe Biden is doing as President, any election where Trump is the Republican nominee will not be about that.
Instead of being a referendum on the current governing party or the issues Republicans have successfully been raising in places like Georgia, Florida, and Iowa, it will become a referendum on Trump. The predictable outcome will not only be that Republicans lose the presidency, but also the Senate and House as races focus on Trump’s legal issues, and Republican candidates are cornered into defending their nominee.
This is the trap Republicans face. By rallying around Trump for what they view as a politicized legal attack in the primary, they give Democrats a major advantage in November 2024. Thus, it prioritizes what Trump wants over what’s best for his voters. Trump’s own comments in 2016, when Hillary Clinton was facing an investigation, help underscore this point and will likely be used against him during a general election.
At the time, Trump rightly pointed out that her pending scandals would make it “virtually impossible for her to govern” and would create a potential “constitutional crisis.” The question Trump supporters can’t seem to answer is what is their plan beyond the primary? He will be running in a general election where most people have already made up their minds, and most independents hate him. His post-2020 election antics and these criminal indictments will not help with that group. But let’s say he can somehow overcome all of that and beat Biden. What’s next?
Trump will likely be saddled with a Democrat-controlled Congress that’ll try to impeach him on day one. In that environment, how he would pass any significant legislation? His entire governance, when not focused on fighting scandals, would presumably be issuing executive orders. Anything significant will immediately be challenged in court and, as we saw after 2020, will be quickly undone by the next Democrat POTUS.
Trump has also never shown the ability or focus to get into the substantive details of the federal bureaucracy and make substantive changes. He spends most of his time watching, reading, and reacting to the news. So, what exactly is his motivation for running other than soothing his ego?
I know there are some in the Trump universe who desperately need him at the center of the political sphere to keep their current act going, but do Republican voters really care more about appeasing his ego than actually winning and enacting changes they believe this country needs? I guess we will find out.
UK Limits Puberty Blockers for Minors Outside Research Settings
Britain’s National Health Service announced last week that it’s joining several other countries in limiting the use of puberty-blocking medications for minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria to clinical research settings. That’s because the science on the efficacy and safety of such “gender-affirming” solutions is still very much in doubt.
This may be a surprise to people who’ve been reading about outrage over similar restrictions on gender-affirming hormone therapy or surgeries for minors in 19 U.S. states. The U.S. media has done a very poor job in relaying that there is an actual debate and instead regularly frames such restrictions as simply anti-LGBT and anti-science.
On a related topic, a new Gallup survey shows that 69% of Americans oppose transgender athletes from participating in sports categories based on their transitioned gender identity. The net opposition to transgender athletes doing so has shifted 15 points since 2021. I suspect the number would be even higher if the question had specifically asked about transgender athletes participating in women’s sports. There aren’t many issues that have such a large consensus among the public, but you would never know that based on much of the media coverage regarding transgender athletes like Lia Thomas in recent years. This is a prime example of where so much of the press existing in an ideological bubble has disconnected them from the views of most Americans.
Washington Examiner Tells the Real Story of New York’s Yeshivas
This newsletter has previously covered The New York Times’ targeted campaign against New York’s small Hassidic community. The Washington Examiner has a good piece interviewing members of that community and directly addressing some of the false claims that have been leveled against them in numerous Times articles.