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More charges for Donald Trump. The news bulletin ricocheted yesterday afternoon (late or early, depending on your time zone) out into a world that has already contended with such news in the past and expected more to come. Was this the highly anticipated indictment from the special counsel on Trump’s alleged crimes around attempting to overturn a lawful election and spur a violent insurrection? Or was this the investigation out of Georgia into related crimes around the same perfidy? We soon learned it was neither, but rather more charges to an indictment already issued in the case of the boxes of highly classified documents Trump allegedly took and then hid at Mar-a-Lago and elsewhere. This included his alleged efforts to conceal the presence of the documents and obstruct their return to the United States government, to which they belong. It’s a lot to keep straight. At this point we need a version of air traffic control to make sense of the jumbo jets of legal jeopardy swirling around the former president. But with each set of charges we get more colorful details and more peril for Trump. Yesterday we found out we could add a subplot that seemed ripped from a mob film to add to the pictures of boxes hidden in ridiculously ornamented bathrooms. The setting was an “audio closet” at the Trump property in Florida and a furtive meeting where one accomplice allegedly tries to lure another with the line “‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted.” (Meaning surveillance equipment.) One could imagine striking screenwriters in Hollywood blushing at such ham-fisted dialogue, unless it was in service to a comedy where boneheaded characters hatch schemes of comic ineptitude. Except this isn’t funny in the least. And it isn’t fiction, as much as we wish it were. At first we wondered whether the news merited another newsletter to all of you. What more is there to say about the toxic swamp of alleged crimes in which the previous president of the United States continues to sink? We expect more charges will come, and with them more insight into the lead-up to January 6 and the horrific events of that day. There certainly will be a lot to parse at that time. But we figured it is important that we keep reminding ourselves just how surreal all this is, and how outrageous. Almost any adjective one reaches for to bring context to the actions of the former president seems woefully inadequate. Unprecedented? Of course, but we have been living that word for years. Infuriating? Sad? Dangerous? Bananas? All of the above and whatever synonyms to those words you can summon as well. To think of the pathetic actions that have been alleged in the charges already issued and the ones that we expect to come, to think of the character of the man, his distorted sense of right and wrong, his untethered approach to the American values he was sworn to uphold, his unrestrained use of power in service to self, is to boggle the mind. And then to consider that he is still the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. It is a reality that is a strain to comprehend. Each new outrageous detail requires a reckoning. History will issue its indictment of our time no matter what happens in the courts. No American has ever lived through anything like this before and hopefully none ever will again, even as we recognize that the danger he poses is far from vanquished. And yet despite all of this, Trump still must be considered innocent until proven guilty of the charges already filed and those that may yet come. The evidence seems strong, but it will need to be proven. With this in mind, you may have noticed that we used the word “alleged” a lot in this column, and it may seem excessive to some, especially considering the specificity of charges and what we already know about the character of the defendant. Yet it is essential that we hold true to our national values ensuring due process and the rule of law even if we did have a president who eagerly trampled them in service to his injudicious exercise of power and the whims of his preference. On this last point, we can safely say, there is nothing just “alleged.” His unfitness for office already has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt. |
