Liz Peek argues in a column for The Hill that the federal indictment of former President Donald Trump hurts America.
Former President Donald Trump has been indicted for illegally storing and hiding classified documents. As conservative radio host Steve Gruber describes it, the “bananafication” of our republic continues apace.
There are three reasons every American — even those of us not supporting Trump’s 2024 campaign — should find this further assault on the former president repugnant.
First, it reinforces the view, shared by many conservatives, that our government delivers a two-tiered system of justice — one for people on the right and another for those on the left. Donald Trump, after all, is not the only public official found to have mishandled secret documents. Special Counsel Jack Smith claimed, as he brought the indictment: “We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone.”
History suggests otherwise.
Former President Bill Clinton was found to have taken audio recordings of his discussions while in the White House and kept them in his sock drawer after his term was up. Judicial Watch sued to access the tapes, claiming they should be considered part of the presidential archive. But a judge ruled against the conservative group, claiming she had no jurisdiction and that such demands could only be made by the National Archives and Records Administration. NARA declined to seek the tapes.
Former FBI head James Comey concluded in 2016 that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” which was stored on an authorized and vulnerable personal server. Further, on several occasions, Clinton appears to have destroyed evidence of that misconduct. Moreover, like Trump, Clinton did not fully comply when asked to provide all the emails that had been sent; the FBI found tens of thousands of additional “work-related” messages on that unauthorized server, some of which contained secret information.
