“None of those figures ignored a subpoena to turn over classified material concerning highly sensitive matters of national security and then sought to conceal it from federal officials and their own attorneys, as is alleged of Trump. And in fact, history suggests that if Trump complied with that request, as some of his peers did, prosecutors may not have pressed charges.
The case against Trump is not so much about the fact that he retained documents he had no right to keep — but that he allegedly did so knowingly and brazenly defying the federal government while putting US interests at risk. That puts Trump in a class of his own.”
“WHAT SEPARATES THE CLINTON AND TRUMP CASES?
A lot, but two important differences are in willfulness and obstruction.
In an otherwise harshly critical assessment in which he condemned Clinton’s email practices as “extremely careless,” then-FBI Director James Comey announced that investigators had found no clear evidence that Clinton or her aides had intended to break laws governing classified information.
As a result, he said, “no reasonable prosecutor” would move forward with a case. The relevant Espionage Act cases brought by the Justice Department over the past century, Comey said, all involved factors including efforts to obstruct justice, willful mishandling of classified documents and indications of disloyalty to the U.S. None of those factors existed in the Clinton investigation, he said.
That’s in contrast to the allegations against Trump, who prosecutors say was involved in the packing of boxes to go to Mar-a-Lago and then actively took steps to conceal classified documents from investigators.
The indictment accuses him, for instance, of suggesting that a lawyer hide documents demanded by a Justice Department subpoena or falsely represent that all requested records had been turned over, even though more than 100 remained in the house.
The indictment repeatedly cites Trump’s own words against him to make the case that he understood what he was doing and what the law did and did not permit him to do. It describes a July 2021 meeting at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, which he showed off a Pentagon “plan of attack” to people without security clearances to view the material and proclaimed that “as president, I could have declassified it.”
“Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret,” the indictment quotes him as saying.
That conversation, captured by an audio recording, is likely to be a powerful piece of evidence to the extent that it undercuts Trump’s oft-repeated claims that he had declassified the documents he brought with him to Mar-a-Lago.”
“First, this was a civil trial, meaning the verdict was supposed to be based on a preponderance of the evidence, as opposed to the much more demanding standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, which is required for a criminal conviction. The question for the jurors was whether it was more likely than not that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll.”
“Second, two of Carroll’s friends, journalist Lisa Birnbach and former TV anchor Carol Martin, testified that she had told them about the incident shortly after it happened. In the spring of 1996, Birnbach said, she received a distraught phone call from Carroll, who described a rape that was consistent with the account that she gave in 2019 and during the trial. Martin described a contemporaneous in-person conversation during which Carroll said “Trump attacked me” but did not use the word rape.
Third, two women, both of whom had previously told their stories publicly, testified that Trump had assaulted them, which Carroll’s lawyers argued was part of a pattern. In the late 1970s, former stockbroker Jessica Leeds said, she was sitting next to Trump on a flight to New York when he “decided to kiss me and grope me,” putting his hand up her skirt. In late 2005, former People magazine reporter Natasha Stoynoff said, she visited Mar-a-Lago while working on a story about Trump’s first year of marriage to his current wife, Melania. Stoynoff testified that Trump suddenly pushed her up against a wall and began kissing her, leaving her “flustered and sort of shocked.”
Fourth, Carroll’s lawyers cited the notorious 2005 tape in which Trump bragged about grabbing women’s genitals. “You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful [women],” he told Access Hollywood’s Billy Bush during that conversation, which came to light the month before the 2016 presidential election. “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” You can “grab ’em by the pussy,” he added. “You can do anything.”
Fifth, Trump did himself no favors during a deposition in which Carroll’s lead lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, asked him about those remarks. “Well, historically that’s true with stars,” he said. “It’s true with stars that they can grab women by the pussy?” Kaplan asked. “If you look over the last million years,” Trump replied, “I guess that’s been largely true, not always, but largely true—unfortunately or fortunately.” When Kaplan asked if Trump considered himself “a star,” he said, “I think you can say that, yeah.”
Sixth, Trump insisted that he did not know Carroll, despite photographic evidence that they had met, and his denial of her charges hinged largely on his claim that “she’s not my type”—as if he could imagine behaving as Carroll claimed he had with a woman he found more attractive. Kaplan noted that when she showed Trump a picture of Carroll greeting him at a social event in the 1980s, he mistook her for Marla Maples, his second wife. “The truth is that E. Jean Carroll, a former cheerleader and Miss Indiana, was exactly Donald Trump’s type,” Kaplan told the jury.
Seventh, Tacopina argued that Carroll’s accusation, which she first publicly lodged in a 2019 memoir that was excerpted in New York magazine, was financially and politically motivated. But the idea that she had suddenly invented the story to boost sales of her memoir was contradicted by Birnbach and Martin’s testimony. And if Carroll’s aim was to hurt Trump’s prospects as a presidential candidate, you might think she would have made the accusation in 2016. Carroll said she did not initially report the assault because she worried about the consequences of accusing a wealthy and prominent man, which was consistent with the advice that Martin said she regretted giving her at the time. Carroll said she was emboldened to come forward by the #MeToo movement, which is consistent with the timing of her public account.
Eighth, although Trump complains that he was not allowed to present his side of the story, he chose not to take the stand or even attend the trial. Michael Ferrara, one of Carroll’s lawyers, emphasized that point toward the end of the trial. “He just decided not to be here,” Ferrara told the jury. “He never looked you in the eye and denied raping Ms. Carroll.”
The jurors notably did not accept Carroll’s characterization of her encounter with Trump as rape, which under New York law requires “sexual intercourse,” meaning penile penetration. But they did conclude it was more likely than not that Trump had “sexually abused” Carroll, which involves nonconsensual sexual contact, and “forcibly touched” her, which involves touching “the sexual or other intimate parts of another person for the purpose of degrading or abusing such person, or for the purpose of gratifying the actor’s sexual desire.””
“Donald Trump claimed he never asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the votes necessary to reverse Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in that state. Trump also said he had “the absolute right” to do whatever he wanted with presidential documents when he left the White House in January 2021. Both of those statements are false, and both go to the heart of potential criminal charges against the former president.
In a notorious phone conversation with Raffensperger on January 2, 2021, Trump pressed him to validate one bogus election-fraud claim after another. Among other things, Trump mentioned “300,000 fake ballots” that “were dropped mysteriously into the rolls”; asserted that “dead people voted, and I think the number is close to 5,000”; said election workers counted Biden votes “three times” and took “18,000 ballots” out of “suitcases or trunks”; and cited a “rumor” that “they shredded ballots in Fulton County.”
Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel, Ryan Germany, patiently refuted these allegations, saying there was no evidence to support them and no reason to believe that Biden had not in fact won Georgia’s electoral votes. Trump was unfazed. He insisted that all of the alleged irregularities amounted to “many, many times the 11,779 margin” by which Biden had won. “All I want to do is this,” he said. “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.”
Trump was frustrated by the resistance from Raffensperger and Germany. “Why don’t you want to find this, Ryan?” he asked. “What’s wrong with you?” Addressing Raffensperger, he asked, “Why wouldn’t you want to find the right answer, Brad, instead of keep saying that the numbers are right? ‘Cause those numbers are so wrong.”
If Raffensperger refused to “find the right answer,” Trump implied, he could face criminal charges. The conspirators who supposedly stole the election for Biden had committed crimes, he said, and “it is more illegal for you than it is for them because you know what they did and you’re not reporting it….That’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.””
“Historically, endorsements have proven pretty predictive of who wins presidential nominating contests. Since the modern primary era began in 1972, there have been 17 Democratic or Republican primary fights that did not feature an incumbent president. The candidate with the most endorsement points3 on the day before the Iowa caucuses won 11. That’s a better track record than polls have at the same point in the election: Since 1972, the leader in national polls4 on the day before Iowa has won the nomination just 10 out of 17 times.
Twelve of those 17 times, the same candidate led in both endorsements and polls. And of those 12, nine times the candidate won. But the five times that the endorsements and polls disagreed, the endorsement leader won twice, and the polling leader won only once. The other two times, a third candidate won.
It’s a small sample size, but endorsements have an even stronger track record when you filter out the years when the endorsement leader didn’t have all that many endorsements. For example, when the endorsement leader has earned at least 15 percent of the total estimated available endorsement points by the day before the Iowa caucuses,5 that candidate has won their party’s nomination nine out of 10 times. Then-Sen. Hillary Clinton in 2008 is the only exception.”
“in principle, a Trump interview was a good idea because it’s never a mistake for the press to confront newsmakers, even if the newsmaker lies about the integrity of the 2020 election, which Trump did. Even if he mocks the justice system because it has held against him, which Trump did. Even if he uses the rhetorical devises of ad hominem, ad populum, ad baculum to savage his foes, as Trump did. Even if he insults the interviewer, which Trump did (“You’re a nasty person,” he said to Collins). Even if he refuses to answer simple questions about his stand on abortion, which Trump repeatedly did. And even if he offers his self-serving hallucinations about the events of January 6 as the truth, which Trump did.”
…
“Trump, after all, leads the Republican presidential polls by a wide margin. A genuine news outlet can’t avert its eyes during a campaign just because a candidate is malevolent, duplicitous, cruel and deceitful.”