Opinion Trump’s confession on Fox News should prompt Democrats to step up
These developments are part of the same story: In both, Republicans refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of law enforcement outcomes that don’t serve their political interests. Democrats need to be more aggressive in pointing out the perverse reality of this GOP posture — and in explaining how incompatible it is with the rule of law itself.
“We can’t have the rule of law without law enforcement,” Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) told me. “It’s essential that we stand up for the normal processes of law enforcement against efforts to intimidate prosecutors and judges into following the whims of autocrat politicians.”
In his Fox interview, Trump raged about the indictment’s reference to a recording of him apparently discussing classified military plans with people who lacked security clearances. Trump told Fox’s Bret Baier that “there was no document” but rather “newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”
That’s odd, because in the recording, Trump mentioned a “plan of attack,” which he later called “secret information” and said he couldn’t declassify as a former president. Regardless, Trump didn’t deny discussing the material with people lacking clearance; he merely claimed it wasn’t one of the documents he hoarded, which will presumably be examined at trial.
What’s more, Trump explicitly told Baier he held on to boxes of documents even after the National Archives demanded them, blithely stating that he wanted to “go through the boxes and get all my personal things.”
As legal experts pointed out, Trump might have incriminated himself by admitting to holding boxes that also allegedly included extraordinarily sensitive national security secrets. Yet Trump insists the indictment is a witch hunt, and Republicans continue to cast his charges as inherently illegitimate, regardless of what the facts show.
All of this calls for more pushback from Democrats, who remain skittish about commenting on the indictment. In fact, Biden has reportedly ordered the national party to remain silent on the prosecution to avoid appearing to politicize it. But with Trump and Republicans working to portray it as the stuff of banana republics, Democrats can’t let these attacks go mostly unanswered.
Any Democrats who don’t want to directly address the indictment itself now have the option of talking about Trump’s comments to Fox. They can point out that Trump has admitted to discussing national security secrets with bystanders and improperly hoarding classified materials.
What’s more, as Brian Beutler argues for Crooked Media, Democrats can discuss the facts of the case publicly while also voicing support for the principle that Trump is innocent until proven guilty. In fact, that would constitute standing up for the rule of law, not “politicizing” it.
The Hunter Biden news underscores the imperative of all this. The president’s son has agreed to plead guilty to willful failure to pay federal income tax and to admit to the facts of unlawful possession of a firearm linked to drug use. If a judge approves the plea deal, he will avoid jail time.
Trump is already raging that this was the work of the “corrupt” Biden Justice Department. Republicans including Rep. James Comer (Ky.) are blasting it as too lenient, insisting that the House Oversight Committee, which Comer chairs, has uncovered far more serious crimes.
That’s absurd. The prosecutor who reached this deal was nominated by Trump, and many House GOP claims about Hunter Biden have fallen apart under scrutiny. In the circular GOP argument, because law enforcement’s findings didn’t bolster the hyper-partisan conclusions of GOP “oversight,” those findings are hopelessly politicized.
In any case, the Hunter Biden news is another opportunity for Democrats to demonstrate that the rule of law is functioning. They can do this by vouching for the legitimacy of the investigations into Hunter Biden and Trump.
“Hunter Biden has got to be held to the rule of law, just like every other American, including Donald Trump,” Raskin told me. He agreed Democrats should step up: “We can no longer sit back and just assume that everyone will understand how the rule of law works.”
It’s true that the president should not engage these debates, since the Justice Department is part of his administration. But other Democrats should try to convince the public that their party, unlike the GOP, is willing to tell the truth about these cases at a difficult national moment and is faithful to the proposition that the rule of law should apply to all — including former presidents and the sons of current ones.
Refraining from engaging on these matters out of fear of appearing partisan effectively concedes that political actors cannot plausibly educate the public in good faith about legal processes implicating the opposition. That can’t be right. Indeed, it would be doubly perverse if this assumption cleared the way for Republicans to smear those processes as corrupt and illegitimate, all to prevent the law from applying to Trump.
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