News O’ The Day Clown Edition 🤡

The framing is improving:

"Former President Donald Trump lied and schemed and misled federal investigators in order to hold on to sensitive materials that he knew were still classified, according to a bombshell 37-count federal indictment unsealed Friday." @darehgregorian https://t.co/vOjM7eHnOm

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) June 10, 2023

And the news is interesting:

Trump first media appearance revealed since yesterday is a radio appearance on his longest-serving political adviser Roger Stone’s radio show on Sunday.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) June 10, 2023

Republicans still don’t know whether to shit:

Sen ROUNDS says Trump’s indictment “should concern all of us.”

“It is unacceptable that sensitive information, which could undermine our national strategy and security, has been treated so carelessly by current and former members of the executive branch,” he says. pic.twitter.com/kg1oeYsgaV

— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) June 10, 2023

Or go blind:

The one-two that has accompanied almost all condemning statements from Rs > https://t.co/mRMi3Q6k6t

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) June 10, 2023

“His sense of personal ownership was so pervasive that his aides, in text messages included in the indictment, were plainly anxious about moving them too far away from him” https://t.co/1PnIkSKaUA

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) June 10, 2023

It’s an interesting question. Wholly irrelevant to the criminal case (“motive” is a murder mystery term, not a legal one), but interesting, nonetheless. Whatever the answer, it just screws him deeper into the ground.

You see, JD, Jack Smith INCLUDED IN THE INDICTMENT that Trump sold himself to voters saying one thing and then did the exact opposite.

You'll be the first witness called in his fraud trial.https://t.co/4dq8cUA9wh

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) June 10, 2023

And while we’re here, let’s look at some other dumb responses to the indictment.

Byron and WSJ are wailing that PRA is not in there but this is.https://t.co/Wme5wKxBnh pic.twitter.com/KFdEMJ7QpO

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) June 10, 2023

More non-expert national security law experts who also aren’t lawyers:

Wow Byron, I'm USED to you and WSJ being epically stupid, but you've both outdone yourself. The reason it doesn't refer to the PRA is that it refers to the EO that Trump COULD have changed himself but already admitted he did not.

[Corrected] https://t.co/OGQJrmeIVO

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) June 10, 2023

I await with trembling excitement the amicus brief filed by York on this very point. Because court is now the only place where such opinions matter.

I've updated this post with @JDVance1's argument that people who sell themselves as careful on classification but then steal classified docs are engaged in a kind of fraud.

Thanks to the Senator for demonstrating the problem. https://t.co/4dq8cUA9wh

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) June 10, 2023

First, an interesting analysis. And an object lesson in why you want competent counsel (which Trump is NOT going to have).

I proposed that this indictment might be understood as a public integrity indictment wrapped up inside an Espionage Act indictment. 

But I don’t rule out we’ll see an Espionage Act indictment wrapped up inside a public integrity indictment.

How you understand the prosecution’s case determines how you defend against it. One thing the defense can always do is re-define the case on their terms. It’s one of the best ways to have a successful defense. But if you don’t understand the case in the first place…

The question of whether Trump should have kept those documents is fundamentally a political question. Criticize it, attack it, vote against it. But prosecuting a president over his own government’s documents is turning a political issue into a legal one.

— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) June 10, 2023

No, it’s fundamentally a legal question. Trump is a former POTUS and a current candidate. Neither of those facts give him a “King’s’X’”. He’s as subject to the laws as the red of us. To argue otherwise is to do what G. Washington didn’t: turn the President into a King.

Maybe you disagree. Maybe you think he should have kept the documents in a safe. Fine. Then go vote against him. I try to understand the left’s perspective, but on this question—throwing Trump in prison over a political issue—they’ve passed the Rubicon. There is no going back.

— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) June 10, 2023

Tell me you don’t know a thing about law, government, or politics, without…well, you know the rest. But it’s the end of this thread that proves it’s hollowness:

This idea that we need to end the administrative state gets our problem totally backwards. America will have a justice department no matter what. The goal should be to make it responsive to the People. Don’t end it, because it can’t be done. Take it over.

— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) June 10, 2023

In short, the DOJ won’t be political when it’s “our” DOJ. It could be reasonably said that Vance sides with Dick the Butcher, and his solution for “right” governance is to kill all the lawyers.

Is being a Senator worth be-clowning yourself this way?

“While Republicans rally around Trump over his second criminal indictment in the last three months, the rest of us are left to wonder at the strange spectacle of an ex-president utterly untethered from rules or reality.” | ⁦@atrupar⁩

https://t.co/p9R4ubfx1d

— Poli Alert ⚖️ (@polialertcom) June 10, 2023

Pretty damned much.