David Rohde: Exhibit A of Trump’s Recklessness

In the days ahead, Trump—as he has done so effectively in the past—will deflect and dissemble. One of his initial defenses on Friday was to falsely claim in social-media posts that President Barack Obama had taken tens of millions of government documents after leaving office: What are they going to do with the 33 million pages of documents, many of which are classified, that President Obama took to Chicago? A statement from the National Archives and Records Administration refuted Trump’s assertion. The archives said that roughly thirty million pages of unclassified records from Obama’s eight years in office were transferred to a National Archives facility in the Chicago area and that they continue to be maintained by the agency. Former President Obama has no control over where and how NARA stores the Presidential records of his Administration, the agency said.

The exposure of Trump’s lies is not new. During his four years in office, Trump was regularly shown to make false claims, exaggerate achievements, and smear enemies. But he was also careful to avoid crossing certain legal thresholds and to generally obey the advice of his lawyers. The Mueller report, for example, revealed that Trump was saved from patently obvious obstruction of justice when top aides—particularly White House counsel Don McGahn—declined to carry out his orders or managed to restrain him. When Trump withheld four hundred million dollars in aid from Ukraine as leverage to demand an investigation of his likely Democratic opponent, he kept his language vague in phone calls with President Volodymyr Zelensky, which helped him deny wrongdoing.

For Americans who wish to look, their worst fears about Donald Trump are being confirmed. He recklessly handled some of the country’s most important secrets, including, apparently, information related to nuclear weapons. Tens of millions of Americans, undoubtedly, will continue to believe his conspiracy theories. But the steady compilation of facts by the January 6th committee, the Justice Department, and the F.B.I. is creating a post-November, 2020, record of negligence that exceeds Trump’s actions earlier in his tenure. The Mar-a-Lago search warrant showed that Trump has grown more rash, thoughtless, and heedless—and more unfit than ever for the Presidency. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/exhibit-a-of-trumps-recklessness

Philip Rotner: Donald Trump’s O.J. Defense

This week, it was Trump preemptively asserting the O.J. Defense. By Tuesday morning, one of Trump’s lawyers, Christina Bobb, was crying foul, suggesting that the FBI had planted evidence. Bobb, who was present during the search and presumably had some information about what documents had been seized by the FBI, took to the airways to proclaim that there is no security that something wasn’t planted. Trump himself doubled down: Everyone was asked to leave the premises, they wanted to be left alone, without any witnesses to see what they were doing, taking or, hopefully not, ‘planting.’ Shortly thereafter, several of Trump’s high-profile supporters joined the chorus.

Preemptively invoking the O.J. Defense is more than a little telling. It strongly suggests consciousness of guilt.

Since Garland’s statement yesterday afternoon and the Washington Post revelation from last night, the Trump apologists’ talking points have shifted yet again—now they’re arguing that Trump himself had declassified any documents taken from Mar-a-Lago, apparently by merely deciding silently that they were no longer classified. (This wishing-makes-it-so argument brings back memories of Richard Nixon saying when the president does it . . . that means that it is not illegal.)

The fact that the arguments made by Trump’s defenders contradict one another—were the documents planted or were they magically declassified?—doesn’t matter to them one whit. After all, the arguments are not intended to persuade a judge or anyone else for whom logical consistency matters. The arguments are intended to sow confusion among Trump supporters, to get them to doubt anything the FBI says about Trump.

Many hardcore Trump supporters have surely already accepted the O.J. Defense and will never stop believing that incriminating evidence found at Mar-a-Lago was planted. As a matter of politics, that’s no surprise: the devotion of Trump’s admirers is already a defining fact of our moment. But consider what it could mean as a matter of justice. If Trump were indicted and tried for crimes based on anything found at Mar-a-Lago, the O.J. Defense could work. Maybe it wouldn’t get him acquitted, but it would only take a single Trump die-hard to hang the jury. In the end, that may be Trump’s best—and perhaps only—defense. https://www.thebulwark.com/donald-trumps-o-j-defense/

Philip Bump: The right’s post-Mar-a-Lago effort to impugn the FBI kicks up a notch

The first minutes after Donald Trump announced that his Florida estate had been searched by FBI agents went better than the former president could have imagined. His years-long effort to cast the bureau as inherently biased against him quickly prompted even Trump-skeptical Republicans to side with him against the devious Deep State. The wagon-circling reportedly pleased Trump, whose team saw a new breath of unity with Trump as its focus.

That this reaction was based on claims of political bias within the FBI that have no basis in the available evidence was beside the point. The point was that the FBI became the opposition, just as Trump would have hoped.

But it turns out that this wasn’t enough. Baseless assertions of impropriety and bias by the FBI have now been kicked up a notch with multiple figures on the right claiming — again without evidence, much less justification — that maybe the feds planted evidence as they combed through Mar-a-Lago. Because, it seems, any opponent of Trump’s must be cast in the most nefarious terms possible. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/10/trump-fbi-search-republicans/

William Saletan: ‘Defund the FBI’—the MAGA Right’s Hypocritical New Slogan

Two years ago, in congressional and state elections, Republican candidates accused Democrats of supporting proposals to ‘defund’ or ‘abolish’ police. Actually, although anti-police slogans were widespread on social media and among protesters, very few Democratic officeholders supported these ideas. But Republicans didn’t let those facts get in the way. They smeared the whole Democratic party as an agent of crime and chaos.

Monday’s FBI search of Mar-a-Lago—reportedly in pursuit of classified documents that former President Donald Trump may have illegally kept when he left office—has turned this issue upside down. Now that law enforcement has targeted Trump, conservatives are denouncing the FBI. Some want to defund the bureau; others are demanding its complete abolition. https://www.thebulwark.com/defund-the-fbi-the-maga-rights-hypocritical-new-slogan/

Susan B. Glasser: Trapped in Trump, Trump, Trump

The bizarre politics of the moment were best summed up in an exchange Thursday morning on Fox & Friends, when the co-host Steve Doocy—an anchor so well known for his Trump cheerleading that Trump once reportedly rated him a twelve out of ten on his personal loyalty scale—seemed astonished by how far Trump’s defenders were willing to go in attacking the F.B.I. on Trump’s behalf. What about death threats to F.B.I. agents, Doocy wondered, and over-the-top comments from House Republicans talking of the need to destroy the F.B.I. and defund it? Whatever happened to the Republican Party backing the blue? the Fox host asked Representative Steve Scalise, the House Republican Whip.

When Scalise responded by talking about agents who had gone rogue, Doocy challenged him again. Steve, who went rogue? Who went rogue? They were following a search warrant. On Thursday, the potential consequences of this reckless rhetoric became clear, after an armed man tried to attack an F.B.I. field office in Cincinnati; the man, who had reportedly attended the January 6th riot at the Capitol, was later shot and killed by law enforcement.

By Thursday afternoon, Attorney General Merrick Garland finally felt compelled to respond to the days of attacks from Trump and his supporters, in and of itself a remarkable nod to the former President’s continued ability to disrupt the normal order of things at the Justice Department, where a policy of not publicly commenting on ongoing investigations is usually sacrosanct. Garland didn’t say much, of course, beyond blasting unfounded attacks on the agents who’d conducted the search and the usual reassuring words about faithful adherence to the rule of law, which would be applied without fear or favor. But he did reveal that the Justice Department has asked the federal court that approved the Mar-a-Lago search warrant to unseal both the warrant and a list of property that was taken. Trump, of course, could have saved Garland the trouble and done so himself—he’s got a copy of both of them. But now his bluff has been called.

Maybe—probably—Trump doesn’t care. He’s sought to raise millions of dollars off the frenzy. He’s forced Republican politicians to publicly abase themselves and trash the nation’s premier law-enforcement agencies in an effort to stay in his good graces. He’s distracted the media from Biden’s big run of successes. He might even be right that, as a matter of politics, the whole thing is good for him.

But what would that say about the country if it is? Count me with Sherrilyn Ifill, the former longtime head of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Education Fund. The implications of this unprecedented act is that the DOJ may now have determined that the former President may have committed criminal acts, she wrote, on Twitter. The rest is speculation and—Trump’s malevolent specialty—political hot air. https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/trapped-in-trump-trump-trump

Jackie Calms: Will the Republican Party trigger another round of Jan. 6-style violence?

In a healthy political party, the leaders would long ago have stood up to Trump and said stop — stop undermining our democracy and arousing the unhinged. In this instance, Republican officials should have urged Americans to let the rule of law take its course. They could have noted that the feds had a search warrant, approved by a judge who was persuaded by the government’s evidence that there was probable cause to believe a crime had been committed.

Woulda, shoulda, coulda. But Republicans didn’t and don’t.

The same Republican officials who for years countenanced or even encouraged the autocratic chants of Lock’er up are now expressing outrage when Trump gets the benefit of the rule of law.

The leaders of the purported party of law and order, who acquiesced as then-President Trump subverted the nation’s chief law enforcement agencies, now dutifully repeat his claims that it’s Joe Biden who’s politicizing the Justice Department and the FBI.

But them’s fightin’ words to many of the former president’s fanatical followers, who — thanks to Trump and other elected Republicans — believe Biden is an illegitimate president and the federal government a rogue operation. Traffic on right-wing social media sites this week was full of calls for civil war and assassinations, NBC News reported.

Throughout Thursday, I received the usual fundraising emails from Trump Inc., which now seek donations to fight this NEVERENDING WITCH HUNT. The emails goad supporters: When they come after HIM, they are REALLY coming after YOU. Meanwhile on Thursday, an armed man was shot and killed by police after he tried to breach a Cincinnati FBI complex.

In Florida, the judge who approved the search warrant for Mar-a-Lago reportedly was getting violent, antisemitic threats from far-right extremists. Fox News said Garland, Wray and FBI agents were getting more death threats than usual. And Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat and vocal Trump critic, released a recording of a profane, racist caller who said someone should cut off his head and the heads of his wife and kids too.

Historians, political scientists and journalists who study Republican voters and far-right groups are increasingly sounding alarms. Northwestern University historian Kathleen Belew tweeted of white-power groups and the militant right, YES, they HAVE BEEN waiting for a moment like this.

Months before the 2020 election, Vanderbilt University political scientist Larry M. Bartels reported on a survey of Republican voters that showed most agreed that the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-08-11/republicans-mar-a-lago-search

Ed Kilgore: The Anti-Abortion Movement’s Divisions Suddenly Have Huge Consequence

Max Boot: Republicans went crazy over the Trump search. Now they look idiotic

David Rohde: Exhibit A of Trump’s Recklessness

For Americans who wish to look, their worst fears about Donald Trump are being confirmed. He recklessly handled some of the country’s most important secrets, including, apparently, information related to nuclear weapons. Tens of millions of Americans, undoubtedly, will continue to believe his conspiracy theories. But the steady compilation of facts by the January 6th committee, the Justice Department, and the F.B.I. is creating a post-November, 2020, record of negligence that exceeds Trump’s actions earlier in his tenure.

The Mar-a-Lago search warrant showed that Trump has grown more rash, thoughtless, and heedless—and more unfit than ever for the Presidency.  https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/exhibit-a-of-trumps-recklessness

Philip Klein: Trump’s Explanation of Document Declassification Doesn’t Pass the Smell Test

David Atkins: Trump Can’t Envision a Government Less Corrupt Than He Is

After FBI agents finished executing a lawful warrant at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida, Donald Trump made an accusation that was astonishing in its lack of self-awareness, even for him. He said in a statement: “They even broke into my safe! What is the difference between this and Watergate, where operatives broke into the Democrat National Committee?”

It is typical of Trump that he would not understand the difference between Nixon’s private crime and the lawful government investigation into his own long history of allegedly criminal conduct. The man runs his family business like a mafia don and ran the White House similarly. He does not think in terms of institutions but in terms of absolute personal loyalty. As president, Trump saw the institutions of government, from the Justice Department to the military, as mere extensions of his own will. The real estate tycoon saw the Attorney General and the Justice Department as his personal attorney and law firm. He fumed that his generals were not as loyal as Hitler’s commanders in World War II. (An historical ignoramus, Trump also failed to grasp how often the Fuhrer’s commanders disobeyed him and even tried to assassinate him.) He emulates and admires dictators who run their countries like personal fiefdoms and treat their economies as family cashboxes.

Trump also projects his abuse of power onto his enemies. He falsely accused President Barack Obama of personally orchestrating the Russia probe and of wiretapping Trump Tower. He constantly made constant references to Watergate back then as well, even as he was begging Russia to hack Hillary Clinton and the DNC. His close friend Roger Stone was in close contact with Wikileaks at the time. Despite its denials, Wikileaks almost certainly received the hacked information directly from Russia. Then Trump obstructed justice at least ten times in Robert Mueller’s probe—felonies that Mueller himself (and hundreds of other federal prosecutors) said merited prosecution. We will likely never know the extent of his complicity in the historic crime that Russian hackers perpetrated against Clinton and the DNC.

Trump’s narcissism is so supreme that he cannot distinguish between personal and institutional loyalty. In his mind, every institution is as corrupt and self-serving as he is. Every accusation is a confession, and he corrupts those around him if they were not corrupted already. And that above all is why he must be held accountable for his crimes and why he cannot be allowed to return to power. https://washingtonmonthly.com/2022/08/12/trump-cant-envision-a-government-less-corrupt-than-he-is/

Steve Benen: GOP discovers new standards on the mishandling of classified info

If there was one thing Republicans cared about six years ago, it was how high-ranking officials dealt with classified materials. In fact, as recently as 2016, the GOP was certain — that is, the party at least pretended to be certain — that politicians disqualify themselves from positions of authority when they put documents at risk.

And so, now that Republicans have learned that Donald Trump allegedly took highly sensitive classified materials to his golf resort, one could imagine the party expressing outrage with the former president. After all, given the GOP’s recent history of passionate feelings on the subject, it stands to reason that Trump may have crossed an intolerable line.

But that would assume that the Republican Party’s principles and standards are consistent. They are not.

To this day, rabid Republican activists will reflexively chant, Lock her up! at the mere mention of Clinton’s name because she allegedly failed to properly deal with classified materials.

And now many of those same Republicans say they don’t much care. Indeed, the only thing many in the GOP appear to care about this morning is condemning federal law enforcement for taking the issue seriously. https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/gop-discovers-new-standards-mishandling-classified-info-rcna42183

Timothy O’Brien: Why Did Trump Take Classified Documents in the First Place?

Reason One seems relatively harmless. Trump is a seven-year-old grown old, and he liked some of the cool doodads you get your hands on as president… Among the disputed documents at Mar-a-Lago was a meteorological map of Hurricane Dorian that he had infamously marked up with a black Sharpie. Who knows why that map was so important to him? Who cares?

The second and third reasons aren’t harmless at all. They’re deeply damaging and troubling.

So, Reason Two: Money. Unfettered greed has motivated Trump his entire life… Recall that Trump’s businesses have been in difficult straits. When Trump left the White House, his operations were saddled with about $1 billion in debt, $900 million of which comes due relatively soon. He personally guaranteed repayment of about $421 million of that debt.

Reason Three: Reputational damage… it’s not unreasonable to worry that his communications with foreign leaders — and anything disreputable or possibly illegal that took place in connection with those — could have been something he felt compelled to hide. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-08-15/why-did-trump-take-classified-documents-to-mar-a-lago

Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Maggie Haberman: Trump’s Shifting Explanations Follow Familiar Playbook

Mr. Trump and his allies have cast the search as a partisan assault while amplifying conflicting arguments about the handling of sensitive documents and failing to answer a question at the center of the federal investigation: Why was he keeping documents, some still marked classified, at an unsecured Florida resort when officials had sought for a year to retrieve them?

The often contradictory and unsupported defenses perpetuated by Mr. Trump and his team since the F.B.I. search follow a familiar playbook of the former president’s. He has used it over decades but most visibly when he was faced with the investigation into whether his campaign in 2016 conspired with Russians and during his first impeachment trial.

In both instances, he claimed victimization and mixed some facts with a blizzard of misleading statements or falsehoods. His lawyers denied that he had tied his administration’s withholding of vital military aid to Ukraine to Mr. Trump’s desire for investigations into Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son, Hunter Biden. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/14/us/politics/trump-documents-explanations.html

Jonathan Chait: Why Every New Trump Crime Just Makes Republicans Angrier at the FBI

David Frum: Unwelcome but important fact to face