[ANALYSIS, OPINION & FUN]
NOTES:
The biggest news recently is the discovery of classified documents at President Biden’s residence and at one of his old offices. Apparently the documents date back to the days of the Obama administration when Biden was Vice President. Former President Trump jumped on this development to demand an end to the Justice Department’s special prosecutor’s investigation into his ( Trump’s) alleged illegal failure to return classified documents to the government that he apparently kept when he left office two years ago.
We’ve said many times before, particularly during the Trump presidency, that: (i) candidates for the Presidency should be legally required to do what virtually all of Trump’s predecessors did. Namely, put all of their assets in a blind trust and/or make all of their financial records publicly available during the campaign for office and weeks before they are elected; and (ii) government officials should take care to appearance of impropriety, especially the President. (After all, lawyers and judges have traditionally been held to this high ethical standard, why shouldn’t all public officials).
[As background, we should note that according to efile.com article titled: “U.S. President, Vice President Candidate Tax Returns” all Presidents, since Richard Nixon except Trump and Gerald Ford, released their tax returns to the public. Moreover, according to Laura Lee of https://www.foxbusiness.com/ several presidents including Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan have used blind trusts so that they would not know if their Presidential decisions adversely or positively affected their business holdings. But Trump did not set up a blind trust. The problem is that tax and other considerations often make blind trusts an unattractive option for super wealthy candidates who have a large diverse portfolio of business holdings. To make matters worse, when elected Trump had several hundred substantial business and investment holdings in various real estate and other business ventures The probability that any decision he made would affect (either positively or negatively) any one of these companies was immense. Alarmingly, the President of the United States is not clearly subject to the same conflict of interest rules that apply to all other government officials. One would think that Congress would change certain tax and conflict of interest laws so that they would apply to Presidents and require them to make the use of blind trusts once elected. (Granted, there are possible constitutional limitations to any attempt by Congress to regulate the Presidency but this is one reason why more ethically responsible past President’s have voluntarily complied with these types of laws even when not required to do so. ] A major point here is that these issues have not risen to anywhere near the level of importance in the past than they have with the election of Donald Trump simply because of the vastness of his business holdings and the foreign connections of many of them. Unfortunately, Trump never did anything of any significance that would mollify or assuage the fears of those who thought that his business interests put him in a perpetual state of potentially having a conflict of interest of one sort or another. And disturbingly enough, this didn’t seem to bother most Republicans or Trump supporters. The fact of the matter is that if we want unbiased and ethical government we, the voters must demand that all candidates for public office, even the ones we support, conduct themselves ethically and avoid the appearance of impropriety.]
Regarding these matters, during his Presidency, Trump, all too often, gave the appearance that he, or one of his companies, was engaging in improper conduct and/or that he or his campaign might be taking or receiving moneys and/or improper assistance from foreign governments or their officials. [We have written several articles before about the alarm bells that Trump has set off and we will try not to repeat too much of what we’ve already stated elsewhere.]
Naturally, all of this has raised legitimate concerns as to whether some of his activities were lawful and/or against the national interest. As just one small example, there have been questions about stays and payments by foreign dignitaries at his hotels. Far more serious questions about Russian influence also arose. Regardless of whether these allegations and/or concerns were true or not, there was always enough evidence that it was true to make any prudent law enforcement official, legislator and/or reasonably prudent voter question and worry about the national interest if not the national security implications. Certainly, there was enough evidence for the government to at least investigate these matters further. It would have been negligence on a grand scale not to do so.
Trump was impeached twice by the House of Representatives. Only three Presidents have been impeached, and only Trump was impeached twice. And again, regardless of the fact that he was not convicted, there was enough evidence of wrongdoing to justify trial of the issue in the Senate. And the very sad fact of the matter is that whether or not one believes that Trump was guilty is largely a question of whether one is a Republican or Democrat. This country cannot long survive questions of whether the law has been violated being decided based on the party to which the accused public official belongs and what party controls which chamber of Congress.
So, that raises the very serious question: Did Trump intentionally take classified documents as a “get out of jail free” card, to use if he ever got into further trouble with the law. Alternatively, was he going to sell those classified documents to a foreign country, perhaps to an adversary, for money– lots of money? Does anyone not think that Trump is probably the most financially motivated President we’ve had in recent memory? Importantly, Trump’s lawyers materially misstated to the Department of Justice that they had turned over all classified documents in response to repeated government requests that they do so, when in fact they hadn’t. In fact, Trump’s recalcitrance in turning over classified documents and lying about the completeness of the documents he had previously returned, got to the point that the government eventually had to get a search warrant and forcefully enter Trump’s compound in order to retrieve even more classified documents. Doesn’t that sound like something is being wrongfully withheld? Doesn’t that sound like something that would happen to someone who is trying to circumvent the law? Some may argue that a Democratic administration is harassing Trump or what not, but the Attorney General is a highly respected former federal appellate judge, and the U.S. Justice Department is not like other governmental agencies and has always maintained a more unbiased and neutral stance on these types of matters than other government agencies.
In stark contrast to the Trump situation, in Biden’s case, Biden’s lawyers, as part of an office move to another address inadvertently discovered classified documents and then voluntarily and without being requested to do so, notified the government that they found classified documents at Biden’s former office. Then, and again, without being requested to do so, voluntarily turned them over. In the interim other classified documents, which have been discovered by the Biden team and they too have been voluntarily turned over to the government. Again, the documents were apparently used by Biden prior to 2016 during his earlier days as Vice President during the Obama administration.
It’s important to note that Biden does not have the far flung financial dealings that Trump has. He’s not anywhere near as wealthy as Trump. Unlike Trump and his business entities, Biden has not had any of his companies or business interests ever questioned, prosecuted and/or sued. By contrast, a day doesn’t seem to go by when Trump or one of his entities isn’t being sued or convicted of something. Biden, on the other hand, has largely stayed out of other potential legal entanglements.
There is, of course, the alleged problems Biden’s son, Hunter, has had pertaining to Ukraine. However, Joe Biden is not Hunter Biden. A parent is not legally responsible for an adult child and so far there seems to be little, if any, evidence that Joe Biden himself did anything illegal in that matter. However, that is still an open question.
As an aside, being an attorney, and self-employed, on some level I can understand how someone would end up with important documents that may belong in another file or to someone else. I can also understand being hesitant to certify or publicly making a statement to the effect that I have no more of a particular document—at least not until I was very certain that I had searched every crack and crevice of my place of business and home to be sure that that was absolutely the case—especially if a potential criminal complaint might ensue if I’m wrong. Like most attorney’s I’ve got loads of files and age can play games on your memory. The real problem in Trump’s case is that from day one of his candidacy for President (if not before) he has played fast and loose with financial disclosure customs for political candidates and always gives the appearance that he believes that he is above the law and in fact has contempt for it. That along with Trump’s prior business dealings in Russia, campaign statements asking the Russians to help dig up dirt on Hillary Clinton, conviction of his company of tax improprieties, lawsuit after lawsuit alleging fraud and other misdeeds and then the not insubstantial evidence that he did not discourage, and may have in fact encouraged, the seditious acts relating to January 6th 2021 riots (to overturn the 2020 election), gives rise to the serious possibility, if not the likelihood, that his improper retention of classified documents was intentional and done so that he would have a bargaining chip to defend against future criminal prosecution—or worse.
From what we know so far, Joe Biden has not been guilty of anything remotely approaching what Trump appears to have done.
The handling of classified documents is a critically important national security matter. Attorney General Garland’s appointment of a special counsel—especially a Republican, to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents is totally proper and warranted. (Of course, Garland has already appointed another special prosecutor in the Trump documents matter). However, the view here is that, so far, the Biden and Trump situations are not at all alike. We are not at all impressed by those politicians, particularly on one side of the aisle, turning this into a political football. National security and the rule of law are once again being severely tested. Once again, anymore it always seems that too many of our elected leaders are more interested in keeping and/or increasing the power of their political party and not about what’s good for the country. This type of attitude, if it continues, will turn the U.S. into destabilized democracy that eventually turns to a dictatorship.
Donald Trump was able to get the Republican nomination in 2016. Clearly, he was an outsider who probably wasn’t the betting favorite when he first announced his candidacy. But not only did he appear to be super-rich but he also, with the help of prior media experience, was able to keep his name in front of the public with often inflammatory Tweets and public statements. The press couldn’t get enough and so he got far more coverage than any other candidate—certainly more than he would have in any society that was not so click hungry for search engine rankings. Is this going to happen again? One has to wonder if the Mar-a-Lago document affair, especially since President Biden now also being investigated for a similar problem, isn’ t in some perverse way again going to keep Trump’s name in the public spotlight. We, wistfully remember a time when losing former Presidents and Presidential candidates just silently rode into the sunset and you really never heard much from them after that.
I think there’s a song that went: “Those were the days my friend….”
TUNES
Speaking of songs. it’s not exactly easy to shift gears after writing the above. But here’s a tune I like a lot that is a tiny bit appropo. I guess.
DDL January 16, 2023
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