Pondering the reality of locking him up

Less than three months after former President Trump began his 2024 reelection bid with a campaign rally here in Waco, he found himself under two indictments – one for falsifying records to hide from voters an extra-marital fling with a porn star, the other a needless, soon-to-be costly battle he picked with the National Archives when, in defiance of long-established law, he boxed up and took with him at the end of his embattled presidency hundreds of classified documents, including those showing just how vulnerable the United States of America is or isn't to some sort of attack.

This is the “patriot” leading the pack for the 2024 Republican Party presidential nomination. That should indicate to any responsible citizen how unmoored the party is from not just reality but matters of national security that once were this party's forte. Don't complain about national security in regard to our border policy and then look away from Trump's recklessness with our classified national security documents. This latter indictment is far more serious than Trump's bid to deceive voters over secret payoffs to sexual partners.

If that’s not enough, more legal problems loom, including whatever charges arise from special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s role in what clearly constituted an insurrection on January 6, 2021.

By now, most discerning citizens who value facts over rhetoric have read the June 8 federal indictment for themselves. It offers detailed allegations which prosecutors must of course prove before a jury of Trump's peers in the ruby-red state of Florida before a Trump-biased judge (at least judging from an earlier slap-down of this judge by a three-judge panel of the 11th Court of Appeals). It's an amazing document if true, demonstrating the former president's increasing resistance to any authority beyond his own, even the deferential but persistent officials of the National Archives. These folks were presumably only trying to follow the law set by Congress for them and former presidents.

The situation reminds one of an overly indulgent teacher trying to press an obstinate child to turn in his homework when due or at least soon after. Trump, 77, was reluctant to turn over classified documents that he not only coveted for reasons thus far unknown but left unsecured at two of his key properties, each of which has welcomed tens of thousands of high-dollar visitors from far and near. In resisting authorities, the former president reportedly jumped back and forth between three key strategies: stonewalling, lying or stonewalling and lying.

At various points, Trump allegedly deceived his own attorneys, which may explain why he has problems securing legal counsel these days. What attorney wants to get famously thrown under the proverbial bus by an undisciplined, high-profile client? Reporting by the Washington Post indicates he got into this latest imbroglio by heeding not his attorneys – some of whom tried to patch up differences between the government and the former president – but Judicial Watch gadfly Tom Fitton, who reportedly convinced Trump that he could legally keep the classified documents. Fitton, 55, who is not an attorney, could arguably be described as a right-wing rumormonger; the group he spearheads could reasonably be labeled anti-government, at least when Democrats are in charge. It’s just enough to make you wonder about all those people Trump fired with such gusto on “The Apprentice” – and those he kept on.

The indictment makes clear two other points: First, the federal government has evidence that Trump showed some of these classified documents to visitors who lacked security clearance – possibly just to impress them and shore up a wounded post-presidency ego; second, Trump knew the importance of securing classified documents, proven by the remarks he repeatedly made during the 2016 election when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Trump's opponent, was under a national heat lamp for extreme sloppiness in private emails involving matters of national security – an Achilles heel that likely contributed to her narrow election defeat amid Republican cries of “Lock her up!”

So here then is Trump involved in a mess of his making more serious than the Clinton debacle. Unlike Clinton, who cooperated by turning over thousands of emails to the FBI, Trump arguably committed graver sins by repeatedly lying to federal authorities – something you and I don't dare do without risking our freedom. Indeed, in reading the indictment, one realizes Trump believes he truly is above the laws the rest of us must obey, constituting the very sort of entitled, elitist and arrogant oligarch that John Adams – a real patriot, by the way – feared might one day prevail to the detriment of the republic.

To quote Adams from his provocative if obscure “Discourses on Davila,” penned in 1790 when he served as the nation’s 55-year-old first-ever vice president under George Washington and pondered the sort of nobility that might sprout in a young, unsteady democracy without monarchs and nobility descended from royal bloodlines: “Riches force the opinion on man that he is the object of the congratulations of others … His imagination expands and his heart dilates at these charming illusions.” Adams understood that while a nobleman – or, by extension, one who assumes its guise – “excites the indignation of many, and the envy of more, it still attracts the attention of the world.”

Yet Trump’s picking a fight with the National Archives, the FBI and grand jurors should leave any rational citizen concerned. Does a twice-impeached president forever tied to efforts to subvert the peaceful transfer of power in America believe this latest fight is prudent and in his self-interest when he so lusts to return to power? Does he not risk alienating at least some core supporters through careless regard for our nation’s security? What must this say of his judgment as a presidential candidate or a president? Is this the fight any smart business entrepreneur would wage? Or has Trump been manipulated by the likes of Tom Fitton? Is it then any wonder President Trump was convinced of a wild scheme peddled by renegade law professor John Eastman and others to invalidate 2020 election returns to his benefit?

No less than the fiercely right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial board, which has long functioned as a reliable apologist for Trump, acknowledged hard realities in a damning June 13 edition: "If Mr. Trump is the GOP nominee, he is unlikely to defeat Joe Biden. But if he did win, the document fiasco is what a second term would be like. He wouldn’t be able to deliver the conservative policy victories that Republicans want because he can’t control himself. He’d be preoccupied with grievance and what he calls ‘retribution.’ The best people won’t work for him because they see how he mistreated so many loyalists in the first term."

Yet arguably risking our national security matters little to latter-day Republicans, most of whom continue to support Trump's long march toward the presidential nomination despite indisputable evidence of his attempting to overthrow a presidential election he lost, his public appeal to suspend the U.S. Constitution in his favor and presidential transgressions during his tenure that would have shocked earlier generations of Americans. For those of us who identify more closely with the conservatism of our father and grandfathers, there is great resonance in the words of retired U.S. District Judge Michael Luttig in a June 25 New York Times column: “No assemblage of politicians except the Republicans would ever conceive of running for the American presidency by running against the Constitution and the rule of law. But that’s exactly what they’re planning.”

As the retired judge ruled in the court of public opinion, "Republicans are as responsible as Mr. Trump for this month’s indictment — and will be as responsible for any indictment and prosecution of him for Jan. 6.”

If I were a Trump 2024 campaign official, or even a follower who subscribes to his grievance-filled populism, I’d be horrified and livid at not only the former president’s refusal to cooperate over sensitive classified documents but his vow to appoint a special prosecutor upon reelection to "go after" Biden, “the most corrupt president in the history of the USA,” and “the entire Biden crime family.” I’d worry about revival of public interest in the mostly forgotten Mueller report regarding the Trump campaign’s ties to Russian intrigue. No, it doesn’t prove Trump “colluded” with the Russian government, but it makes abundantly clear to the most obtuse citizen that President Putin worked overtime to elect Trump – and that while hardly co-conspirators in a strictly legal sense, Trump and his family openly and warmly welcomed Russian help in the U.S. presidential race of 2016.

But I'm not a Trump follower, never have been, even as I've tried in countless interviews to understand his enduring appeal. Year after year, I'm mystified at citizens such as those in Washington on June 24 attending the Faith & Freedom Coalition, a group whose creaky traveling bandwagon of opportunistic blasphemers and political agitators occasionally rolls through my town of Waco, here to question the faith and patriotism and morals of others. I'm mystified at those who fervently claim to be Christians, fervently claim to be conservatives, fervently claim to cherish Jesus' teachings, fervently claim to value character and family values, yet demonstrate every sordid quality of membership in a rigorous cult of personality, ignoring in themselves the sins they see in the world about them. Trump, charismatic showman as ever, lovingly and passionately played his part as the Christ-like martyr during his appearance before this national assemblage. "Every time the radical-left Democrats, Marxists, communists and fascists indict me, I consider it a great badge of courage," he told the faithful to unrestrained cheers, applause, whistles and screams of joy. "I'm being indicted for you, and I believe 'you' is more than 200 million people that love our country. They're out there and they love our country."

Lock him up? Is it really coming to that?

As President Ford and, to a degree, disgraced President Nixon arguably understood nearly 50 years ago, Americans recoil at the notion of imprisoning former presidents and political opponents. It conjures up not a democratic republic grounded in the peaceful transfer of power but a banana republic with the stench of rebellion, tyranny and corruption. After Trump left power in January 2021, many of us – like or dislike him – hoped he would simply do what former presidents in America do: find some favorite causes benefiting the greater good to champion in retirement. But how is a constitutional republic to deal with one whose favorite cause is himself and who demonstrates such a willingness to turn our divided nation into a sprawling banana republic?

Bill Whitaker spent more than 45 years as a reporter, editor and columnist in daily Texas journalism, including a dozen years as Waco Tribune-Herald opinion editor. He is a member of the Tribune-Herald Board of Contributors.