Bess Levin
One of the biggest legal problems donald trump is currently facing is the criminal investigation into his decision to take classified documents out of the White House with him when he left and subsequently refuse to return them, despite being ordered to do so on numerous occasions. “Given the details of the case and all the [possible] charges, I don’t know how the DOJ isn’t prosecuting Trump,” lawyer George Conway Told Fair in October. “And I don’t know how Trump isn’t doomed, especially if he’s on trial in the District of Columbia.” For the moment, legally, it does not seem that anything has changed concerning: the legal danger of the ex-president (According to The New York Times, special advice Jack Smith ‘asked prosecutors to stress test potential charges related to ‘Trump’s ‘handling of national security documents’ and ‘recalled key witnesses to review their accounts and present more information before the grand jury “.) Optically and politically, however, he has recently taken two major breaks – first, when the lawyers of Joe Biden found classified documents from his time as vice president and as a senator in various places where they weren’t supposed to be, and second, when it was revealed Tuesday that a lawyer from Mike Pence reportedly found about a dozen classified documents at the former vice president’s home in Indiana.
Yes, after saying, in front of the camera, that such a thing was not possible:
And that Biden should be ashamed of himself:
In a letter sent to the National Archives and obtained by CNN, Pence’s attorney Greg Jacob wrote that a “small number of documents bearing classified marks” were accidentally sent to the Vice President’s home. “Vice President Pence was unaware of the existence of any sensitive or classified documents at his personal residence,” Jacob insisted. “Vice President Pence understands the great importance of protecting sensitive and classified information and stands ready and willing to cooperate fully with the National Archives and any appropriate investigation.”
Are the Biden and Trump situations remotely comparable? Not to our knowledgesince what we know is that Biden’s team immediately turned over the documents to the government when they were found, and cooperated with the investigation from the start, while Trump lied so many times to have documents at Mar-a-Lago indicating that the FBI had no choice but to raid the place in August. (And after that, even more documents were found.) Additionally, the ex-president is not cooperating at all with the investigation into his handling of the documents, short of baseless claims that the FBI filed evidence at Mar-a-Lago is deemed to be cooperative. As for Pence, it’s too early to tell; while he certainly has does a lot of shitty stuff as VP, there is a good chance that Mother Boy did not knowingly keep documents that did not belong to him or defy a government subpoena to return them.
Of course, Republicans and their supporters aren’t known for appreciating nuance or facts, which means that, at least in their eyes, this is all incredible news for Trump and more proof that he’s got nothing. hurt. One might even expect the ex-president to call Pence and express his gratitude; maybe even say something about being sorry for supposedly call the guy a “pussy” and saying he deserved these songs asking that he be hanged!
If nothing else, Trump is apparently so grateful to Pence for taking the heat off him that he was ready to tune into Truth Social today and offer a full-throated defense of the guy who, again, recently claimed that he deserved to have people clamoring for him to be violently killed, Writing“Mike Pence is an innocent man. He has never knowingly done anything dishonest in his life. Leave him alone!!!”