While many Americans feel former President Donald Trump is the target of a political witch hunt by the Biden administration and its allies, the latest allegations against the Republican Party’s top presidential candidate are troubling, according to a leading constitutional law expert.
Trump arrived in Miami Monday, a day ahead of his arraignment in federal court on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s 37-count indictment, including 31 counts alleging the former president violated the Espionage Act prohibiting willful retention of national defense information. He’s also charged with obstruction of justice and making false statements.
Hans von Spakovsky, manager, of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative and Senior Legal Fellow, Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, agrees with other conservative legal experts that the prosecution of Trump supports concerns that there is a two-tiered system of justice in America.
Democrat President Joe Biden has his own problems with possessing classified documents, his troubled son Hunter is accused of myriad criminal and legal wrongdoing, and Trump’s 2016 presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton, seemed to get a pass from the FBI and federal prosecutors after being found to have been grossly negligent in her handling of classified and secret documents. Aides to Clinton, former Secretary of State under President Barack Obama, destroyed evidence. Yet the FBI ultimately decided not to recommend the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate in 2016 be charged.
“But, I’ve got to say, if the facts as alleged in the federal indictment over classified materials being down at Mar-a-Lago [are true], Trump is in trouble and he’s got problems,” von Spakovsky told The Star News Network on the Vicki McKenna Show.
The legal expert said he was astounded reading through the indictment, detailing the alleged sloppy manner in which Trump and assistants handled reportedly classified material. Boxes of records sat in a ballroom of the former president’s estate, accessible to anyone, according to the indictment. They were moved to a bathroom and then a storage room that had an open-door access from the pool patio.
But the biggest problem facing Trump and his legal team, von Spakovsky said, is the allegation that Trump was recorded saying a document in his possession had yet to be de-classified before he left the White House. Trump’s argument has been that he used his executive authority to de-classify the records in his possession.
“This one [the Smith indictment] makes some pretty serious allegations and I think he’s going to have to put on a full-fledged defense to try to keep himself from being convicted in this case,” von Spakovsky said.
Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz agreed that the recorded conversation is a “damning piece of evidence.” But Dershowitz told Fox News he isn’t buying the special counsel’s assertions that there is “one set of laws” in the United States and they “apply to everyone.”
“He was assigned only one job – to get Trump,” the legal expert said on “Sunday Morning Futures.” “If you put aside all your resources and do what [Supreme Court] Justice [Robert] Jackson warned about 80 years ago – where he said it’s a question of picking the man and then searching the law books or putting investigators to work to pin some offense on him – that’s what they did.”
Former Acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker added that Smith has pursued an “aggressive prosecution” against the former president.
“I’ll point out that he was the one that got reversed 9-0 by the U.S. Supreme Court on the Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell case for taking a very aggressive position on a statute. You know, the interplay between the Presidential Records Act, which says all documents are covered by that act, and the Espionage Act, which preceded it” and was passed in 1917 shortly after the U.S. entry into World War I, “I think is going to be the most important issue that the courts are going to have to decide,” Whitaker told Fox News.
Trump reiterated Monday that he did “absolutely” nothing wrong.
“It’s such a disgraceful situation,” he said on the Simon Conway Show on NewsTalk 1040 WHO in Des Moines, IA. “It’s a continuation of the same witch hunt that’s been going on from the day we came down the escalator and it’s that continuation and it’s election interference.”
He said the people of Iowa “get it,” pointing to an Emerson College poll showing Trump leading Biden by 11 percentage points in the Hawkeye State, The survey, conducted before the indictment dropped, showed 49 percent of voters backed the former president, with 38 percent supporting Biden, and 10 percent saying they wouldn’t vote for either. Another 3 percent remained undecided.
Trump, meanwhile, held a 42 percentage point lead among Republican voters over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who had just entered the presidential race at that time.
A new ABC/Ipsos poll conducted in the wake of the federal indictment found 48 percent of respondents believe Trump was rightfully charged, with 35 percent saying he shouldn’t have been indicted. Another 17 percent weren’t sure.
But 47 percent of those surveyed believe the charges against the former president are politically driven.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Donald Trump” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0. Background Photo “Courtroom” by Karen Neoh. CC BY 2.0.
