Mediaboss Marketing

Ron DeSantis is girding for battle with Donald J. Trump where he believes the former president may be most vulnerable to attack from a fellow Republican: on substance.

Mr. DeSantis, the Florida governor, is expected to make a series of policy-based arguments, according to his public statements and interviews with people who have met with him privately and described their conversations on the condition of anonymity.

He is telling Republicans that, unlike the mercurial Mr. Trump, he can be trusted to adhere to conservative principles; that Mr. Trump is too distractible and undisciplined to deliver conservative policy victories such as completing his much-hyped border wall; and that any policy promises Mr. Trump makes to conservatives are worthless because he is incapable of defeating President Biden.

Mr. DeSantiss challenge is obvious to anyone who has seen a recent poll: Mr. Trump maintains a deep psychological hold over many Republican voters who appear immune to reasoned arguments against him.

The thrice-married Mr. Trump, who stands accused of hush-money payments to women including a porn star, has never been the avatar of a social conservative. But he largely governed as one. That he was motivated more by transaction than by conviction was irrelevant to millions of evangelicals who cheered as he brought about a Supreme Court that would overturn Roe v. Wade.

But Mr. DeSantis is expected to argue that the reason Mr. Trump made so many ideologically inexplicable personnel decisions like elevating Dr. Anthony S. Fauci at the outset of the Covid crisis was because he has no fixed principles to fall back on when he faced difficult decisions.

By contrast, allies say that Mr. DeSantis will try to make the case to Republican voters that they can trust him to stand his ground on tough issues like abortion.

People who have spent time privately with Mr. DeSantis describe him as an ideologue whose happy place is a quiet room where he can read an academic journal or policy paper. Somewhat socially awkward, he peppers his conversations with references to the Constitution, the Federalist Papers and Supreme Court case law.

Mr. Trump has never been accused of citing the Federalist Papers in casual conversation. His attention span for policy is limited at best. He has powerful gut instincts on trade, immigration and some aspects of foreign policy, but in most policy areas he is open to deal-making or to the suggestions of whoever spoke to him last.

Here are five of their likeliest friction points on policy.

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June, Mr. Trump has appeared uncomfortable with the consequences of his signature achievement. He privately blamed abortion hard-liners for Republicans disappointing results in the midterm elections, has refused to say whether he would support a national abortion ban and implied Floridas new six-week abortion ban was too harsh.

Mr. DeSantis has seized on those remarks, and his allies hope the issue helps him make inroads with the Christian right. Protecting an unborn child when theres a detectable heartbeat is something that almost 99 percent of pro-lifers support, Mr. DeSantis said recently, noting that Mr. Trump, as a Florida resident, hadnt said whether he would have signed the heartbeat bill.

Still, despite supporting abortion rights for most of his adult life, Mr. Trump was the most consequential anti-abortion president in history. He reminds conservative audiences that while previous Republican presidents made plenty of promises, he was the one who ended Roe.

Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump differ in their approaches to corporate America.

Mr. DeSantis subscribes to the theory, popular among the self-described New Right, that leftists have taken over so many American institutions including academia, the media and big corporations that conservatives are fools to cede these battlefields to progressives in the name of limited government.

Instead, Mr. DeSantis argues that conservatives must use every lever of government power to fight back and if that leaves traditional conservatives feeling squeamish, then so be it.

Mr. Trump has flirted with this idea but never fully bought into it. He has fought against so-called environmental, social and governance investments, railed against social media companies for their treatment of conservatives and enacted tariffs that enraged multinationals. But he also slashed taxes for corporations and invited chief executives he would later deride as globalists into the Oval Office and onto his business councils.

A longtime New York businessman, Mr. Trump loves, above all, to be seen cutting a deal. He sees Mr. DeSantiss fights against woke Disney as futile and bad for Floridas economy. He has cheered on the recent efforts by Robert A. Iger, Disneys chief executive, to outmaneuver Mr. DeSantis.

Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis have split in important ways on two pivotal foreign policy questions: how to deal with China, and what role the United States should play in Ukraines war against Russia.

Mr. Trump has been credited for prodding Republicans and Democrats into viewing China as a ruthless adversary rather than an imperfect trading partner. But for most of his presidency, Mr. Trump saw the U.S.-China relationship through a purely economic lens.

He praised President Xi Jinping of China as he chased a trade deal that he could trumpet to American farmers. He imposed tariffs on China but rejected other measures like sanctioning Chinese officials for human rights atrocities, lest that interfere with his trade deal. It was only in 2020, after Mr. Trump blamed the Chinese Communist Party for the spread of Covid, that he finally sidelined his administrations China doves and fully empowered its hawks.

Mr. DeSantis cares less about U.S.-China trade and more about the national security threats that Beijing poses. As governor, he signed a law banning Chinese social media platforms such as TikTok from state government devices and another that will stop many Chinese citizens and companies with ties to its government from buying property in Florida. Mr. Trump has promised to enact similar restrictions on Chinese investment and has called for China to pay trillions of dollars of Covid reparations, but his record suggests he will be more open than Mr. DeSantis to negotiating with Beijing.

On Ukraine, Mr. Trump has gone further than Mr. DeSantis in ruling out American support for Kyiv. While Mr. Trump called Russias invasion a crime against humanity in the early days of the war, he has more recently refused to draw any moral distinction between the Ukrainians and the Russians saying only that a deal must be struck. He has mused about handing over chunks of Ukraine to Russia.

After dodging questions about Ukraine, Mr. DeSantis told the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that defending Ukraine against Russia was not a vital U.S. interest and dismissed the war as a territorial dispute. Stung by criticism, Mr. DeSantis walked back the territorial dispute line, and in a subsequent interview he called Mr. Putin a war criminal. Mr. Trump refused to do the same when asked to on CNN.

While both Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis are contemptuous of international institutions such as the United Nations, the former president poses a more significant threat to the post-World War II international security framework.

Mr. Trumps former national security adviser, John R. Bolton, feared his boss would withdraw the United States from NATO and grew convinced he would do so if he won re-election to a second term. Now, Mr. Trump validates those fears on his campaign website, pledging to finish the process we began under my administration of fundamentally re-evaluating NATOs purpose and NATOs mission.

In Republican nominating contests before the age of Trump, the leading candidates tended to fight over who was more fiscally conservative who would abolish more federal agencies and who was more likely to reduce the federal government to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub, as the anti-tax activist Grover Norquist put it.

But Mr. Trump has redefined the G.O.P. primary campaign into a battle over who is the most protectionist on trade, and who will most faithfully preserve government benefits for the elderly. Mr. DeSantis, who rose in politics as a Tea Party fiscal conservative, has so far shown little interest in trying to out-populist the former president on government spending and trade, and seems to hope he can reorient the partys conversation around fiscal discipline.

Mr. Trump and his super PAC have called out Mr. DeSantiss congressional votes to cut spending on Social Security and Medicare. Mr. DeSantis has said he wont mess with Social Security for seniors currently dependent on the program, but unlike Mr. Trump, he has not ruled out trimming entitlement spending in ways that would affect younger Americans when they retire.

Mr. Trump has initiated attacks against Mr. DeSantis for his past efforts to kill the Renewable Fuel Standard, which requires ethanol to be blended into the nations fuel supply. Fiscal conservatives see this as big government overreach, but Mr. Trump knows how important ethanol is to Iowas economy.

Mr. Trumps allies plan to portray Mr. DeSantis as weak on trade meaning he wont use tariffs as aggressively as the former president, who proudly branded himself a tariff man and launched trade wars with China and Europe. Mr. Trump has promised that in a second term he would introduce a new system of universal baseline tariffs that rewards domestic production while taxing foreign companies.

Mr. DeSantis will contrast his budget surpluses in Florida to the trillions of dollars Mr. Trump added to the national debt when he was president. Mr. DeSantis will point out that as a member of Congress he voted against the trillion-dollar-plus spending bills that then-President Trump signed into law in 2017 and 2018. And Mr. DeSantis plans to tie Mr. Trump to high inflation by criticizing his appointment of Jerome H. Powell as Federal Reserve chairman.

Mr. DeSantis has signed hard-line legislation on crime, including a law that lowers the threshold for imposing the death penalty.

Mr. Trump, who has cultivated a law-and-order persona, undercut that image in office by allowing his more liberal son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to lead bipartisan negotiations on a criminal justice law that would shorten federal prison sentences.

Mr. Trump quickly regretted signing that law, known as the First Step Act, and blamed Mr. Kushner. Privately, Mr. Trumps own advisers have acknowledged the First Step Act is a vulnerability with his political base.

Yet Mr. DeSantiss ability to directly attack Mr. Trump over the law is complicated by the fact that, along with most Republicans, he voted for the initial House version of it one that focused narrowly on prison reform and was opposed by civil rights groups and many Democrats. The much different version that passed, enacted when Mr. DeSantis was no longer in Congress, included sentencing reforms and the ability to apply retroactively for a reduced sentence.

The well-funded super PAC supporting Mr. DeSantis is expected to attack Mr. Trumps record on crime.

And in something of a course correction, Mr. Trump has called for imposing the death penalty for drug dealing, sending the National Guard into high-crime areas and deploying the U.S. military against Mexican drug cartels.

Here is the original post:
The Policy Fights Where DeSantis Sees His Chance to Hit Trump - The New York Times

The next criminal charges former President Donald Trump may face could well come from Special Counsel Jack Smiths investigation into Trumps possession of nearly 300 classified documents including some marked as top secret at his Mar-a-Lago residence and business in the year and a half after he left office. While Fani Willis Fulton County, Georgia investigation into election interference continues, as does a federal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and Alvin Bragg has already indicted Trump in New York for his role in false statements connected to hush money payments to Karen McDougal and Stephanie Clifford (aka Stormy Daniels) during the 2016 presidential campaign, an indictment by Smith in the Mar-a-Lago investigation would yield the first federal charges against the former president. Trump may face charges ranging from obstruction of justice and criminal contempt to conversion of government property and unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as Special Counsel in November 2022 to investigate interference with the transfer of power following the 2020 election as well as Trumps retention of classified records and potential obstruction of justice. Smiths appointment came after over a year of efforts by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the Justice Department to have Trump voluntarily turn over presidential records in his possession as required under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, a standoff that only ended after a federal court approved a request by the FBI to search Trumps Mar-a-Lago residence for classified documents.

Under the Presidential Records Act, presidential records are considered federal property and are required to be turned over to NARA upon the president leaving office. On January 20, 2021, Trump left the White House for his home in Florida. Members of Trumps transition team were responsible for packing his things and were required by the General Services Administration to certify in writing that the items being shipped were required to wind down the Office of the Former President and would be utilized as the Office transitioned to its new location in Florida. In May 2021, NARA found that documents were missing from the material received from Trump when he left office; the agency requested the records from Trump on or around May 6, 2021. NARA then engaged in prolonged discussions with Trump representatives to acquire the records.

In late December 2021, NARA was informed by a Trump representative that at least 12 boxes of records had been found at Trumps Mar-a-Lago residence. In January 2022, Trumps team turned over 15 boxes of documents from Mar-a-Lago to NARA for their review; NARA determined that 14 of those 15 boxes contained classified material and, in February, referred the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation. After several months and repeated attempts to retrieve additional documents, on May 11, 2022, the Justice Department obtained a grand jury subpoena seeking any and all documents bearing classification markings in Trumps possession. Investigators suspect, based on witness statements, security camera footage, and other documentary evidence, that following the subpoena, Trump personally examined documents stored at Mar-a-Lago.

In response to that subpoena, on June 3, 2022, the Justice Department obtained a single envelope from Trumps attorney at Mar-a-Lago containing 38 documents, 17 of which were marked top secret, 16 marked secret, and 5 marked confidential. They also received a signed certification from Trumps attorney Christina Bobb that following a diligent search, no further classified documents remained at Mar-a-Lago. It subsequently became public that despite signing the certification, Bobb had not personally conducted a search for the documents but rather had been directed to sign it by another Trump attorney, Evan Corcoran.

On August 8, 2022 the Justice Department executed a warrant to search Mar-a-Lago for additional classified materials. FBI agents seized more than 100 classified documents from both the storage room at Mar-a-Lago and desks in Trumps personal office. Among the documents were some with classification levels so restricted that even the FBI counterintelligence personnel and DOJ attorneys conducting the review required additional clearances to review them.

The FBI and Department of Justice routinely prosecute individuals, including high-level officers like former CIA Director David Petraeus, for misusing classified documents. There are several criminal provisions that may be implicated, depending on the exact contents of the documents.

Obstruction of justice is the impediment of government activities. There are several statutes that criminalize different types of obstruction, including 18 U.S.C. 1519 which criminalizes obstruction of justice when an individual knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States. Section 1519 is a felony, punishable by fine, imprisonment of up to 20 years, or both.

It seems rather straightforward for a prosecutor to prove that the classified documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago were concealed (e.g. their disclosure was prevented by Trump refusing to turn them over to the DOJ and NARA) and that Trumps concealment was done knowingly given that Trump has admitted that he knowingly took documents from the White House and investigators even suspect that Trump personally examined relevant documents at Mar-a-Lago following the May 11 subpoena. Conviction therefore turns on whether the statutes specific intent requirement is satisfied, which it likely is here.

A defendant has the specific intent required under 1519 when they know their conduct would obstruct a federal investigation, regardless of whether or not an investigation was pending at the time. Given the repeated attempts, including court orders, that the government undertook to investigate and recover these documents, it seems quite likely that Trump knew he was obstructing a federal investigation in his repeated refusals to comply with NARAs and DOJs attempts to recover the presidential records. Moreover, prosecutors have also apparently learned that two of Trumps employees moved boxes of papers the day before FBI officers visited Mar-a-Lago in June 2022 to retrieve classified documents in response to a subpoena. Trumps conduct wasnt innocent or pursuant to routine document retention policies. Rather, it was seemingly purposefully designed to permit him to retain documents that were legally the possession of the United States government.

Criminal contempt is another obstruction charge, this one based on willful disobedience of a court order, such as a grand jury subpoena. Conviction under 402 requires a prosecutor to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that a lawful order was issued by a federal court and the defendant willfully and unlawfully violated that order. Criminal contempt is a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine up to $1,000, up to 6 months imprisonment, or both.

The May 11, 2022 grand jury subpoena requested [a]ny and all documents or writings in the control or custody of Donald J. Trump and/or the office of Donald J. Trump bearing classification markings This subpoena was unquestionably a lawful order issued by a federal court. Conviction here requires showing that Trump knew about the order and deliberately or recklessly violated it. Although the subpoena was addressed to the Office of Donald Trump and not Trump individually, it stretches credulity to claim that he wasnt aware of it. Trumps personal examination of classified documents in his possession following the court order is additional evidence that he knew about the subpoena and the need to respond to it. Moreover, Trump attorney Christina Bobbs false signed certification that no classified documents remained at Mar-a-Lago seems highly unlikely to have been sent to the DOJ without Trumps knowledge, indicating that he likely deliberately or recklessly defied the subpoena.

The Department of Justice frequently brings charges under 18 U.S.C. 1001, which makes it a crime for someone to make a willfully false written or oral statement about a material fact to a federal investigator or agency. Importantly, under 1001 the government need not prove that the defendant himself made the statement, but rather that he caused it to be made.

To charge Trump with a violation of 1001, the government will need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump knowingly and willfully caused his attorneys to submit false statements. For example, we know that Trump attorney Christina Bobb signed and submitted the June 2022 certification that no further classified documents remained at Mar-a-Lago at the direction of another Trump attorney, Evan Corcoran. Prosecutors however would have to prove Trumps involvement in causing this certification to be made in order to bring a 1001 charge. From public reporting it seems that the Justice Department may be viewing both Bobb and Corcoran as witnesses, rather than targets of the investigation. Although attorneys are generally precluded from testifying against their clients under attorney-client privilege, that privilege has several exceptions, including a crime-fraud exception, which may be relevant here.

The Department of Justice uses 18 U.S.C. 641 to prosecute cases where classified government materials have been mishandled. In particular, 641 makes it a crime for a person to willfully and knowingly convert a government document or record for personal use. The offense is a felony punishable by a fine, 10 years imprisonment, or both.

It is undisputed that classified government documents are things of value. Trumps repeated refusal to comply with government requests to return the classified documents in his possession was done willfully and knowingly. The question then becomes whether Trump convert[ed] those government documents for his own personal use. Conversion under 641 requires knowingly using the government documents in a way that seriously interfered with the governments right to use and control its own property. Here, Trumps use was retaining the documents a retention that was incompatible with the governments attempts to regain control of its property under the Presidential Records Act. Trump has previously stated that he did not want to return the documents because he believed they belonged to him. As recently as May 2023, Trump claimed that he would have the right to show the documents to anyone, and investigators have questioned witnesses about whether Trump showed these classified documents to anyone, including political donors.

The Department of Justice frequently charges individuals including high-ranking officials like David Petraeus with violations of 18 U.S.C. 1924. Section 1924 makes it a crime for an officer or employee of the United States to knowingly remove classified documents with the intent to retain them in an unauthorized location. Since 2018 the offense has been classified as a felony, punishable by a fine, imprisonment of up to five years, or both.

The president, as chief executive officer of the United States, is plainly an officerof the United States as Trump himself admitted in separate litigation. Moreover, the FBIs August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago clearly retrieved classified documents that were stored at an unauthorized location. Trump has admitted that he knowingly took these documents from the White House and illustrated his intent to retain them by his failure to comply with a federal subpoena to turn them over. Trump and his allies, however, have argued that prosecution under 1924 or other similar statutes is uncalled for because he allegedly declassified the documents prior to his departure from the White House. There is no indication that this is the case. And, importantly, no steps were taken to modify the classification markings on the relevant documents a prerequisite before documents can be actually declassified.

Willfully and unlawfully concealing government records with an intent to do so is a criminal act under 18 U.S.C. 2071. A felony punishable by a fine of up to $250,000, imprisonment of up to 3 years, or both, a prosecutor would be required to prove that (1) a defendant willfully and intentionally concealed, removed, or destroyed; (2) a government document or record; (3) filed or deposited in any public office of the United States. It is clear that the documents in this case were concealed because their disclosure was prevented by Trumps repeated efforts not to turn documents over to the DOJ and NARA and that the documents are government records because case law makes clear that presidential records material, like those retrieved from Mar-a-Lago, qualify under the statute. Prosecutors would have to go further however, proving that the concealment was willful and intentional. There is sparse precedent explaining when a document is filed or deposited in any public office, but the case law that does exist indicates that documents are considered filed if they are records of a public office.

One of a number of offenses under the Espionage Act, 18 U.S.C. 793(e) criminalizes the willful retention of documents containing or pertaining to national defense information and failure to deliver such documents to appropriate government entities by those in unauthorized possession of or with access or control over such documents. Although the statute is associated with leaking classified information to foreign adversaries, by its terms it could apply here. Conviction under 793(e) requires the government to prove: (1) the defendant had unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over; (2) any document relating to the national defense of the United States; (3) that the defendant had reason to believe could injure the United States; (3) yet wilfully retained the document; and (4) failed to return the document. Conviction under 793(e) is a felony punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment, a fine of up to $250,000, or both.

It is clear Trumps removal and retention of classified documents constitutes unauthorized possession (because he was no longer authorized to have them) and that he failed to return them when requested. A prosecutor would also have to prove that the retention was wilful and that the defendant had reason to believe the document could injure the United States. There is also a significant unresolved factual question to this charge that a jury would have to determine, namely, whether the information was related to the national defense of the United States. Classified information is not necessarily related to the national defense of the United States. Rather, information is related to the national defense of the United States when it is directly and reasonably connected to the U.S. national defense, is closely held, and disclosure would pose a risk to U.S. national security. Without knowing the exact contents of the documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago, it is impossible to say whether they include information related to the national defense of the United States, although press coverage suggests that at least some of them do.

Although Congress has the authority to conduct oversight of the executive branch and its agencies, as implied by the Constitution and confirmed on several occasions by the Supreme Court, this authority does not extend to interfering with the independence of our criminal justice system. That is why, historically, Congress has not interfered with pending criminal investigations and, in the rare instance in which Congress has requested materials pertaining to ongoing investigations, DOJ has refused to provide them.

Nonetheless, following the House Judiciary Committees recent attempts to obtain confidential files from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Braggs office following his indictment of Donald Trump for hush money payments made in relation to the 2016 election, there is widespread speculation that the House Judiciary Committee may attempt a similar feat here. Indeed, Trumps legal team has already requested that Congress make similar demands during the Mar-a-Lago investigation. Historical precedent makes clear that such a request would be overstepping, and that Special Counsel Smith would be well within his rights to decline.

Although the investigation into Trumps mishandling of classified documents preceded his November 15, 2022 announcement that he is running for president, Attorney General Merrick Garland took the election into consideration when he appointed Special Counsel Smith. Special Counsels are attorneys appointed by the Justice Department to carry out investigations when there is a perceived conflict of interest or when their appointment is in the publics best interest.

Department of Justice regulations state that, Federal prosecutors and agents may never select the timing of any action, including investigative steps, criminal charge, or statements, for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party. Because of this, by policy, the Department of Justice has an unwritten rule, the so-called 60 Day Rule, that it will avoid taking public investigatory steps close to an election that could influence how people vote. For these reasons, if Special Counsel Smith is to charge Trump, he likely will do so before the 60 Day Rule would be triggered.

Trumps lawyers have argued that he didnt violate the law because the documents he retained had been unilaterally declassified. Presidents may classify and declassify materials at their discretion. Trump however has failed to show any evidence that he declassified the documents prior to their removal and retention. Moreover, some documents obtained by NARA seem to indicate that Trump knew how to properly declassify documents yet failed to take any of those required steps.

Conviction of some criminal offenses, including 1924, requires a knowing and unauthorized removal of documents. Trumps attorneys have started to lay the groundwork to argue that the removal of these documents was not knowing and, instead, was the result of institutional practice and procedures within the White House. To that end, they blame NARA for allegedly not assisting in pack-out procedures for presidential records when Trump departed office, and point to a compressed timeline of only four years in office that allegedly put him at a disadvantage compared to other outgoing presidents and vice presidents.

This defense ignores the fact that NARA did provide staff to help pack out Trump and fails to address Trumps conduct after the May subpoena, at which point the evidence suggests that Trump may have personally inspected documents with classified markings and, if so, thereby knew of their existence and removal from the White House. Moreover, Trump has admitted that he knowingly took documents from the White House, suggesting during a CNN town hall in May 2023 that he was allowed to take these materials with him when he left office.

In an April 2023 letter to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Trumps lawyers argued that Trumps alleged mishandling of classified documents was not criminal. Instead, the letter argues, that the Justice Department should be ordered to stand down and, in their stead, the intelligence community should conduct an appropriate investigation and provide a full report to this committee. This letter however seems to overlook the fact that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence did conduct a review in coordination with the Justice Department. Moreover, an intelligence review does not preclude a criminal investigation where the facts warrant, as they do here.

Trumps lawyers may argue, as the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) already has, that Special Counsel Jack Smiths appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the Constitution. The crux of the argument is that a special counsel cannot be named without Senate confirmation an argument that was raised repeatedly to delegitimize former Special Counsel Muellers investigation into 2016 election interference.

This argument is flawed. Since 1999 the Department of Justice has had regulations in place that provide for the appointment of Special Counsels who possess the full power and independent authority to exercise all investigative and prosecutorial functions of any United States Attorney. Jack Smith was appointed pursuant to this authority. In 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in In re Grand Jury Investigation upheld the special counsel regulations, concluding that a special counsel is an inferior officer under the U.S. Constitution and therefore does not require Senate approval.

In recent months, classified documents have been found in former Vice President Mike Pences home and in President Bidens home and Washington think-tank. There are however significant differences between these cases and Trumps mishandling of classified documents.

In the case of both Pence and Biden, a small number of classified documents were found in their possession. In both cases, NARA and the FBI were immediately contacted, took possession of the documents, and conducted voluntary searches of the premises to identify and remove any further documents. Unlike Trump, it appears based on the publicly known evidence that neither Biden nor Pence knew they were in possession of classified documents. Furthermore, both cooperated with law enforcement and immediately turned the documents over. Their actions therefore demonstrated a lack of willfulness or intent, particularly when compared to the year and a half of requests that NARA made to Trump and his team to retrieve classified documents, an effort that required a court ordered search of Mar-a-Lago because of Trumps and his teams seemingly repeated noncompliance.

It is very likely that Trump will soon face his first federal indictment for his possession and mishandling of over 300 classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence. Trumps apparent refusal to cooperate with law enforcement to return those documents and the protracted attempts by the Department of Justice and NARA to retrieve them not only places Trump in legal peril, but differentiates his conduct from that of President Biden and former Vice President Pence. With three simultaneous investigations into former President Trumps conduct moving forward in New York, Georgia, and at the Department of Justice, Trumps legal woes have likely only begun.

Read the original post:
Donald Trump is likely to be indicted soon related to classified ... - Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

Christiane Amanpour has recently become an even brighter journalistic star, and it has nothing to do with her day job as chief foreign correspondent for CNN.

Its because she publicly condemned her employer for hosting a widely panned televised town hall in which former President Donald Trump did what he always does: repeatedly interrupted the moderator and lied incessantly, egged on by a studio audience of sycophants hooting approval at his cruelty.

Amanpour got most everything right in her critique, except the part in which she contrasted failings in covering Trump with how much better the press supposedly performed in covering Wisconsins Joseph McCarthy, the disgraced late U.S. senator, in the 1950s.

Larry Tye, who wrote a 500-page book on McCarthys demagoguery, begs to differ. Well get to that, as well as Tyes perspectives on the CNN event.

Amanpour, addressing the graduating class of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism recently, criticized CNN for allowing a Republicans-only studio audience and for presenting the event live, limiting any opportunity for fact-checking.

My management believes they did the right thing as service to the American people, she told the Columbia audience. I still respectfully disagree with allowing Donald Trump to appear in that particular format.

She said it was nave to think the event would succeed, given Trumps track record: He just seizes the stage and dominates, no matter how much flak the moderator tries to aim at the incoming. It doesnt often work. Amanpour had what she called a robust conversation with CNN Chairman and CEO Chris Licht, who has defended the town hall as newsworthy.

Amanpour said journalism leaders could learn from predecessors from the 1950s, whom she said refused to give McCarthy attention unless his foul lies, his witch hunts and his rants reached some basic level of evidence.

Sadly, this 1950s journalists-as-heroes theme did not ring true with me, having learned how much William T. Evjue, founder of The Capital Times, was a lonely outlier for years in this newspapers relentless scrutiny of McCarthy dating to the late 1940s.

I emailed Tye, a former Boston Globe reporter and prolific author whose exhaustively researched 2020 book on the disgraced Republican senator was titled: Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy. (The Cap Times excerpted part of the book for a print cover story.)

Interesting comments by the great Amanpour, but sadly totally wrong, Tye emailed back. The press, as you know, published McCarthys false claims from the first big lie he told in Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1950, when he said he had in his hand a list of 205 spies at the State Department.

The fact that he couldnt back up that claim didnt matter, same as it didnt matter when he made page one day after day over the next couple of years, Tye said. Defenses from those he was accusing generally were relegated to page 57 in the next days paper, next to the corset ads.

McCarthy does offer an object lesson, but of what not to do how press inaction or complicity enables demagogues like McCarthy.

Tye said courageous journalists such as columnist Drew Pearson and television commentator Edward R. Murrow belatedly stepped up to make up for their colleagues errors and take on the bully. Tye said the press failed early on to expose McCarthy even though it would have been easier because he was only a senator and not an ex-president.

Tye elaborated further in a telephone conversation: Before the press was McCarthys disabler, it was his enabler in a dramatic and, I think, embarrassing fashion.

The press blew it, he said, when it uncritically covered McCarthys charges that there was a Communist behind every pillar in the State Department. By the time theyd ever sort of catch up with him and say what about this, we want to see the list that you were holding in your hand, he had already succeeded.

The press was perpetually a step behind in checking on his charges before they had made them page one news. And it was a huge challenge to the press, and it took the press like it took most leading government officials in America too long to figure out what it had done wrong and correct course.

Tye was scheduled to speak this week at the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas, about why it took then-President Dwight Eisenhower, a fellow Republican, so long to stand up to McCarthy. The press was similarly culpable, he said.

The mainstream of American media was out there just repeating what McCarthy said. Many of the exceptions were papers like yours in Wisconsin that knew who this guy was and knew how unjustifiable his charges had been from his earliest days, Tye added.

A key difference between McCarthy and Trump was that McCarthy was no master of the then-new medium of television, Tye said. His poor performances in front of cameras, including at the Army-McCarthy hearings and attempting, awkwardly, to rebut Murrow by appearing alone on Murrows show, hastened his downfall, Tye said.

Donald Trump doesnt play well in the print world that McCarthy dominated, but he has mastered the TV world in a way that the best reporter cant begin to contend with, Tye said.

Even giving CNN the benefit of the doubt that I am not sure it deserves, (the network) was trying to build a big audience, (not) a fair and balanced event. I think that they got a big audience and they learned the hard way that you dont take on the master of a medium in their medium.

Tye added, The idea that you can go on and give him a forum like that and expect that youre not going to get trampled is nave. You dont beat a demagogue in a demagogues forum.

Coming from an expert on political demagoguery, thats a maxim worth remembering.

The rest is here:
Donald Trump CNN town hall failure echoes McCarthy coverage ... - The Capital Times

Former GOP Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich suggested Wednesday that Donald Trump communicates better than Ron DeSantis but it didnt come off as complimentary to many. (Watch the video below.)

One of Trumps great advantages is he talks at a level where third, fourth and fifth grade educations can say, Oh yeah, I get that. I understand it. Gingrich told host Laura Ingraham on her Fox News show.

The comment drew mockery from online critics. The fact that [Trump] speaks to the children says everything you need to know about the educational level the Right is shooting for, one person on Twitter wrote. I dont see where thats good for somebody thats running a country. SMH, another commented.

Gingrich was assessing the strengths of the two leading Republican candidates for president after DeSantis officially entered the race on Wednesday. He praised the Florida governors intelligence but questioned his communication skills after Ingraham played a clip of DeSantis making a convoluted comparison involving financial institutions and elections.

Gingrich, a Fox News contributor, recommended that the Florida governor boil down the message to a slogan.

Here are other reactions to Gingrichs remarks about Trump:

Follow this link:
Newt Gingrich's Unintentional Burn Of Donald Trump Is Priceless - Yahoo News

Former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal predicted Wednesday that an indictment for Donald Trump in the classified documents scandal is coming soon and explained why it will be the former presidents worst nightmare.

Katyal, appearing on MSNBCs Deadline: White House, noted to anchor Nicolle Wallace how neither Attorney General Merrick Garland nor special counsel Jack Smith, whom Garland appointed to lead the investigation, are overtly political, much to Trumps annoyance.

Garland, although a political appointee, has a long-standing reputation in Washington of being bipartisan, of being a careful and respected jurist on both sides of the aisle, Katyal said.

Smith, meanwhile, is independent.

So, as between those two, when were talking about something as sensitive as Do you indict a former president?, it would make all the sense in the world that thats a Jack Smith determination, Katyal said.

And thats what Donald Trump is afraid of, he added. Hes afraid of having someone independent do this. If its someone political, at least he can trash it as being political or this or that. So this is Trumps worst nightmare.

Amid reports Smiths investigation has almost concluded, Katyal noted Justice Department rules are to bring prosecutions when they are ready and you dont really look to external influences or things like that.

My expectation is this is going to be soon, he added.

Former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb this week said the Department of Justice has a tight case against Trump for allegedly refusing to return classified documents after leaving the White House.

Trump denies any criminal wrongdoing.

Watch the interview here:

Read more:
Ex-DOJ Official Predicts When Donald Trumps Worst Nightmare Will Happen - Yahoo! Voices