The starting point of the strategy donald trump in view of the events of Mar-a-Lago It consists of affirming that the search by the FBI and the Department of Justice constitutes an act of political persecution and evidence of bad faith. It is a continuation of the witch hunt mantra, the same one he uses every time he has been questioned/investigated for breaking the law.
This simple but effective argument allows him to easily reach an audience that does not understand and cannot moderately understand the intricacies of the law and its complexities. And it appeals, fundamentally, to the emotional plane, not to the rational one, a typical fact of populism. In essence, with these messages, Trump manages to socialize falsehoods of various kinds on the Internet and turn his popular bases into a sounding board, even knowing his potential dangerous effects in a highly divided and polarized country. Words, of course, do not fall into a void. The storming the capitol it was just a sample button of its disruptive and destructive possibilities.
The foregoing allows him to leave in the shade the factuality of the Mar-a-Lago case, basically: a) that his tenant had national security information in his possession, that is, classified and highly secret documents duly marked as such by the corresponding devices ; b) that the government notified him that he was not allowed to retain those documents in his facilities; and c) that despite this he continued to hold them and allegedly made efforts to hide them in different places on the property, until the FBI finally had to execute the search warrant at the home of a former president, an event without precedent in the history of USA.
But perhaps the most revealing window of all those strategies is what he just posted on Truth Social, the platform that Trump has used since October 2021 after his access to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram was blocked. What is new here consists in sustaining that the FBI “buried” intentionally information about Hunter Biden before the 2020 election to hinder his political aspirations. He said so: “the FBI BURIED THE HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY BEFORE THE ELECTION knowing that had they not done so, Trump would have easily won the 2020 Presidential Election. This is ELECTION FRAUD AND INTERFERENCE on a level never seen before.” seen in our country.
It is clearly a corollary aimed at matching/feeding back the idea alluded to at the beginning, accompanied by another very simple one: “I HAVE NOT DONE ANYTHING WRONG”. The latter secured against the grain of the Section 2071 of the United States Penal Code. It is a crime to hide, eliminate, mutilate, erase, falsify or destroy official documents that, as codified by the Presidential Records Act, they are owned by the government, not the former president.
Here a question emerges that neither Trump nor his acolytes are asking, both inside and outside those peculiar popular bases. If this is so,why And for what took them from the White House? If the answer is that he did not know, as has sometimes been clumsily argued, it is clear that in any case ignorance of the law does not imply abdication of criminal responsibility. Moreover: according to the aforementioned legal statute, the person who commits this crime “will be fined […] or imprisoned for not more than three years, or both, “will lose his position” [de tenerlo] and “will be disqualified from holding any office in the United States (2071-b)”.
But for the purposes of what is of interest now, what is most relevant is Trump’s proposal in these new changing circumstances that are increasingly unfavorable for him and his legal team: call new elections or reinstate him as president. It’s that simple.
REMEDY: Declare the rightful winner or, and this would be the minimal solution, declare the 2020 election irreparably compromised and have a new election, immediately!
Department of Justice believes that Donald Trump has deliberately hidden secret documents
And this means? many wondered. The answer is, in my view, clear. Flip-flop. Distraction. fun. And more gasoline for the everlasting forest and alleged electoral fraud. This seems to suggest that as he is cornered, from bad to worse, Trump’s messages will become more shocking and even insane. And of course this is not an act of mental insanity, but a coldly calculated political procedure.
That is why the constitutional expert and Harvard Law professor, Lawrence Tribesaid that if Trump was attempting an “insanity defense against the various investigations against him, that strategy will not work.”
More recently, the Justice Department has revealed previously unknown details in response to lawyers’ request for an independent review of documents seized at Mar-a-Lago. In a 36-page document, the Department deepens the figure of “obstruction of justice”, previously only mentioned in the affidavit authorizing the search. Most notably, the department has evidence that Trump “hidden and deleted” classified documents in what they call an effort to “obstruct the government’s investigation.”
That’s why the lawyer Andrew Weissmann, quite a fourth batter in this type of fight, was able to conclude the following: “You don’t make such a strong, bold and accusatory presentation if you don’t have every intention of accusing.” If that happens, then the sentence will have been fulfilled: no one is above the law. The arrow has been released.
Meanwhile, the old aphorism is in the air: “if the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, hit the table and scream like hell.”
