The investigation of Donald Trump over classified documents and the current indictment may absolutely be election interference by the FBI. The prosecutor who handled the investigation, Jack Smith, may be a partisan hack who cared less about justice and more about doing the bidding of the radical left. And for sure, the lack of prosecution of Hillary Clinton (for her illegal and non-secure server, and her obstruction of justice) or Joe Biden (for mishandling classified information) shows inherent bias in our justice system.
But make no mistake; Donald Trump has some real problems within this indictment, and there’s no use in pretending that is not the case. Both famed lawyer Alan Dershowitz and constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley have said as much. They may be liberals, but they’ve defended Trump countless times, particularly during the Democrats’ impeachment efforts and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s absurd indictment. But there are parts of the indictment which are, at best, extremely problematic for Trump.
“It is an extremely damning indictment,” Turley told Fox News. “The Special Counsel knew that there would be a lot of people who were going to allege that the Department of Justice was acting in a biased or politically motivated way. This is clearly an indictment that was drafted to answer those questions.”
Turley noted that the indictment is “overwhelming in details,” and warned that “the Trump team should not fool itself; these are hits below the waterline. These are witnesses who apparently testified under oath, gave statements to federal investigators, both of which can be criminally charged if they’re false. Those witnesses are directly quoting the president encouraging others not to look for documents or allegedly to conceal them. It’s damaging.”
He went on to argue that every indictment he’s ever been involved with was “a heartstopper” written by lawyers trying to convict the accused. “Every indictment I’ve ever dealt with has fallen apart to some degree,” he acknowledged. “But this is, is not a, an indictment that you can dismiss.”
Fox News’ favorite legal commentator Jonathan Turley: “It is an extremely damning indictment … this is not an indictment that you can dismiss” pic.twitter.com/1hE9phC7ie
— Lis Power (@LisPower1) June 9, 2023
Dershowitz revealed in an interview with the Daily Mail that he was surprised by the indictment.
“This indictment is stronger than I anticipated in one respect and in one respect only,” he explained. “It has the text of a conversation between former President Trump and a writer in which Trump says: Look, I know these documents that I have in my hand are secret. I could have declassified them. I didn’t. Here, I’m going to show them to you to prove my point.”
Dershowitz continued, “That does seem to be evidence that at least there were some documents that President Trump knew were not unclassified. He had them in his possession. Whether the documents were actually given to an unauthorized person to read or just flashed before his eyes, as part of typical Trump bravado, the government is going to have to prove.”
Despite this, Dershowitz doesn’t think Trump will actually go to prison over it. “But I would be cautioning him to make sure he doesn’t say anything more. That increases those chances.” That said, he made an excellent point about Trump’s demeanor. “President Trump is going to have to look in the mirror and say, ‘Why did I allow myself to be taped in a conversation with a writer when I knew I was being taped?’”
Why did he? It’s an excellent question. And it’s that bravado that Dershowitz thinks is the most likely to get Trump in real trouble.
“Trump has obviously a history and a reputation of speaking too much and getting himself into trouble. This may be the worst sentence he ever uttered in terms of his own protection from criminal prosecution,” Dershowitz argued. “It’s the only page in the indictment which I think stands up to scrutiny.”
There’s little doubt that Trump’s indictment is politically motivated, but it nevertheless proves that Trump is his own worst enemy.