I’d like to respond to three critiques of my Corner post from yesterday, titled “Yes, Her Emails.” In it, I argue that “anyone — either on the anti-Trump left or the Trump-skeptical right,”
who thinks that the FBI and Department of Justice’s credibility can survive in the eyes of the average, normie American if it prosecutes Donald J. Trump on very, very similar mishandling-of-classified-documents charges that Hillary [Clinton] avoided with nary a slap on the wrist is naïve to the point of lunacy.
You can read the whole thing here.
Let me address a few of the most common lines of argument.
1. What Hillary did with her emails isn’t comparable to what Trump has done.
Here’s a representative sample from the ongoing disaster that is my Twitter timeline:
“Clinton’s emails were mostly about her yoga schedule. Trump’s are about our nuclear arsenal. These are not equivalent.”
“Finding three emails that were retroactively classified is totes the same as stealing TS documents regarding nuclear weapons. Genius.”
“This defines weak, base spinning, whataboutism ‘journalism’. Her email server and return of government documents were well within the laws at the time. Trump & company may be looking at the full Rosenberg for their actions. There are no parallels here.”
I’m honestly perplexed by this response. I don’t know if it’s just the passage of time or a genuine lack of knowledge about the gravity and irresponsibility of Clinton’s actions during 2016’s “Emailgate.”
As my colleague Andy McCarthy took the time to note last night after Attorney General Garland’s remarks, then–FBI director Jim Comey — who conducted the investigation and infamously decided to not pursue criminal charges — didn’t think Hillary Clinton’s emails were merely about her yoga schedule. From Comey’s public comments on July 5, 2016:
Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
For example, seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation. In addition to this highly sensitive information, we also found information that was properly classified as Secret by the U.S. Intelligence Community at the time it was discussed on e-mail (that is, excluding the later “up-classified” e-mails).
None of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government—or even with a commercial service like Gmail. [Emphasis mine.]
I’ll note that — as someone who has gone through the U.S. military’s security-clearance process — material is classified as “Top Secret” if it can be reasonably expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to national security if released.
What Hillary did was, at minimum, “extremely careless” in the handling of extraordinarily sensitive information. Hillary’s “yoga routine” excuse was a dodge then, and it’s a dodge now.
2. You don’t actually care about the institutional credibility of the FBI and DOJ.
Actually, yes I do. I care deeply about the strength and credibility of our institutions, public and private. Institutions — from the Boy Scouts to the Marine Corps to the NFL — must husband and conserve their credibility because, once lost, it’s almost impossible to recover. We all know what it’s like to live in a country in which institutions that once were held in general esteem have suffered atrophy and collapse. The American conception of “ordered liberty” is like a tree in the desert without strong institutions watering our common soil. Over the last couple of days, I have been trying to make the point — perhaps ineffectively — both through sarcasm and through polemic, that the FBI and DOJ are already on thin ice credibility-wise with half of the American people.
The execution of the search warrant on Mar-a-Lago was a grave event in American history. Neither the Right — with its clownish hysterics — nor the Left — with its Major Kong–style celebrations — is helping.
3. Why are you defending/excusing/protecting Trump?
At no time have I defended or excused Trump in this matter. As I wrote days ago, “I think that anyone who egregiously mishandles classified documents has likely committed a felony and should be investigated and probably prosecuted, regardless of whether he or she happens to be a politician or potential candidate for president.”
If Trump is shown to have broken the law, he deserves to face the consequences of his actions.
But it is not excusing or defending Trump to point out that every decision has a cost as well as a benefit.
I am much less concerned about Trump facing the music in this matter than I am about holding the Republic together. You’re free to disagree — after all, it’s a free country — but I believe that the best way to move past Trump is through politics, not lawfare. A shortsighted focus on putting Trump in the dock may be satisfying to his enemies, but they’re not the ones who need convincing that this process is fair. Like it or not — and entirely to Trump’s demagogic discredit — millions upon millions of Americans believe that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that the institutions and powers of government have been unfairly used against him in a years-long “witch hunt.” You may not believe that. Hell, I don’t believe that. But something like a full third of the country does.
We know that prosecuting Trump, if he committed a crime, would have a benefit: That is justice and it would be self-evident. But why are so many so dismissive of the costs?
Prudence requires weighing the cost of our actions. My argument is not that Donald J. Trump did not or could not have done anything criminal in his conduct relating to classified materials, much less that his actions should be excused, waived off as nothing, or memory-holed.
My argument is that half the country will not accept criminal charges for conduct largely similar to what his onetime political opponent received a slap on the wrist for.
If your response is, “I don’t care about any of that; Trump’s guilty, so charge him,” or, “Trump’s supporters will never be convinced, so ignore them,” or, “to hell with prudence, I want Trump’s scalp mounted on my wall,” then you don’t care about the health of the Republic. You don’t care about finding a way back towards national comity. You don’t care that many of your fellow citizens will never forgive you or ever again trust that their government is fair-minded.
We must find a path towards stopping the ceaseless, one-way political ratchet and eye-for-an-eye vindictiveness and revenge that have characterized our politics for so many years.
Here’s a hint: If you can’t see the reasonableness of that imperative and understand why, at a minimum, any actions against Trump outside the political process should be weighed very carefully against the downstream costs, you’re blinded by partisanship or hatred of the man.
I stand behind no one in my desire to see Donald Trump go away. I’ve argued for years that he has been a malign influence on American life and the conservative movement. But he’s not going to go away by pushing a ticky-tack criminal charge on him or by nailing him for something that your and my partisan, tribal lizard-brains will never forget was waived away when it was Hillary Clinton with her hand in the cookie jar. Even if Trump deserves it — and he probably does — criminal charges in this matter won’t end Trump. They’ll supercharge him.
Trump will go away when center-right Americans affirmatively choose another leader through the political process — at the ballot box.