“No man is above the law and no man is below it, nor do we ask any man’s permission when we ask him to obey it. Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not asked as a favor.”
President Theodore Roosevelt, Message to Congress, Dec. 7, 1903.
On Aug. 8, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed a legal search warrant at the residence of former President Donald Trump. The search warrant gave the FBI the authority to look for top secret and classified documents Trump had illegally removed from the White House in January 2021. Trump supporters reacted in the same way they have reacted to anyone who tried to hold Trump accountable for his actions.
Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., compared this legal action to the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police. Apparently she thinks serving a legal search warrant is equivalent to kicking down doors and dragging people off to a concentration camp.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, wondered why the Department of Justice didn’t just ask for the documents. In fact, the DOJ had asked for these documents in May 2021. After months of discussion, agents retrieved 15 boxes of documents from Mar-a-Lago in January 2022.
In time, it became clear that more were still missing, in violation of the Presidential Records Act. This act requires presidents to turn over all their records to the National Archives when they leave office. On June 3, agents went to Mar-a-Lago, with a subpoena, to search for more documents. A Trump lawyer certified that all classified documents had been surrendered to the FBI. That was a lie.
Information obtained indicated that more documents were stored there, in an unsecured location. With that probable cause, the search warrant was obtained and signed by a federal judge.
When agents served the warrant, they found classified, secret and top secret documents, some at the most sensitive level of classification, in the storage area. These are documents that would normally be held in the most secure locations.
These facts have been ignored by Republican leaders and others, who seem to care more about Trump’s feelings than about the unrestricted exposure of national security secrets.
Even if these documents had been declassified properly (which they weren’t), possessing them is a violation of the Espionage Act. That’s because these documents contain information which would endanger individuals and our national security if the wrong people got hold of the information. People from all over the world come to Mar-a-Lago. Who knows who might have had access to this information?
Sen. Rand Paul’s, R-Ky, solution to the problem? Repeal the Espionage Act. This kind of reaction proves beyond a doubt the hypocrisy of the Republicans Party.
Remember when some Democrats called for defunding local police? Republicans got hysterical. Now Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, R-Ga., and Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., have called for the defunding and destruction of the FBI, with little push-back from Republican leaders.
Republicans opposed investigating Trump on violating the emoluments clause in the Constitution (Article I, Section 9) and insurrection (Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3). They screamed “political witch-hunt.” Now they want to investigate U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who is doing his job appropriately.
Trump used to say that innocent people would never take the Fifth Amendment. In a recent deposition, he invoked it over 440 times. Republicans had no problem with that.
Do these reactions fit in with previous Republican claims of supporting law enforcement? Only when their enemies are the targets.
As president, Trump may have had the legal right to declassify documents. However, there is a very specific process for doing this and it’s not waving a magic wand over a bunch of boxes and saying the magic words, “Declassify, declassify, declassify.” Whatever Trump did, he doesn’t have the right to endanger lives by exposing sensitive information.
All this proves, beyond a reasonable doubt, that too many Republicans have decided that Trump is above the law and shouldn’t be held accountable for anything. By doing so, they make a complete mockery of the idea of law and order.
Trump once said he could stand on Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody without losing a single voter. “We are fast approaching the kind of moment Trump once envisioned, where he literally commits murder in broad daylight and doesn’t lose a single vote.” (Arthur Delany, HuffPost)
This is who Republicans are supporting, a man who thinks laws don’t apply to him. That Republicans think this is fine is unpatriotic and dangerous.
Jeanette Strong, whose column appears every other week, is a Nevada Press Association award-winning columnist. She may be reached at news@lahontanvalleynews.com.
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