One of the most telling features of the GOP reaction Thursday night to Donald Trump’s latest indictment was how almost nobody actually defended him on the substance.
It was a witch hunt. The Justice Department was “weaponized.” We were now a “banana republic.” This was somehow an effort to distract from the Biden investigations. Virtually none of it even gestured in the direction that, as Trump said repeatedly in his video response, he’s an “innocent man.”
And we woke up Friday to yet another big reminder of why that is.
CNN offered new details on something Washington Post reporting has previously pointed to: that Trump appears to have been actually showing off classified documents after leaving the White House. CNN now has a transcript of a 2021 tape suggesting Trump was doing just that. (The Washington Post has confirmed the details of CNN’s report.)
How this moves the ball forward: It also involves Trump saying, on tape, that at least some of what he had remained classified, despite his highly suspect suggestions that he has declassified it.
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The quotes from the transcript are remarkable. And they will undoubtedly feature prominently in the case ahead.
While discussing an apparently classified Pentagon document about attacking Iran, Trump offers the money quote, “As president, I could have declassified, but now I can’t.”
CNN reported the tape features the sound of rustling papers, as if Trump is waving around paper.
“All sorts of stuff – pages long, look. Wait a minute, let’s see here. I just found, isn’t that amazing?” Trump said. “This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is like, highly confidential. Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this. … This was done by the military and given to me.”
The context of the tape is notable. Trump was apparently seeking to rebut a New Yorker story about Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley having been concerned about Trump’s desire to launch a military strike against Iran. That would place the conversation in the summer of 2021, after the National Archives had in May contacted Trump’s team about retrieving presidential documents.
It’s likely that Trump’s defense will rest in part on the idea that this was bluster — Trump building up what he had to show off to guests, even if it wasn’t true. Trump’s lawyers reportedly weren’t able to find such a document to turn over.
But this merely adds to a list of revelations that continues to grow rapidly. The Washington Post reported two weeks ago that not only does evidence indicate the boxes of documents were moved inside Mar-a-Lago while all of this was happening, but that two employees moved boxes the day before a June 2022 visit by the FBI. This came after a subpoena for documents had been issued. The Post also reported that Trump and his aides allegedly conducted a “dress rehearsal” for moving sensitive papers before the May subpoena.
In other words, there is tons of evidence that Trump was conscious of what the federal government said he had and possibly that there were deliberate steps taken to hide it. And yet for months and months, he resisted returning it. He was even talking about the idea that he hadn’t declassified it, which could sharply undercut Trump’s upcoming defense.
(Trump’s lawyers have conspicuously declined to echo their client’s public claims on this point, and apparently for good reason.)
Which brings us back to the GOP response on Thursday night. It’s the second major development, along with the Mar-a-Lago search in August, after which Republicans immediately leaped to decry federal law enforcement despite all of us knowing little about the full scale of evidence against Trump.
To the extent some did entertain the idea that such a search could be warranted back then, they pointed to the potential presence of highly sensitive documents. Then we learned that such documents were indeed seized.
That gets to why almost no Republicans are talking about the substance.
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Any actual defenses are at risk of falling apart thanks to a man who, regardless of his guilt, has demonstrated very little interest in avoiding potential legal pitfalls.
Actually defending Trump means pretending the potential exposure of highly classified information just isn’t that big a deal, which is diametrically opposed to where the GOP was during the Hillary Clinton email server investigation. (Just imagine the right’s reaction if we had tape of Clinton saying, “You see that server over there? Lots of really juicy stuff on it!”)
Also, Trump’s public pronouncements about such things — like declassifying the documents — simply can’t be trusted because of his track record. The fact that Trump’s own lawyers won’t vouch for what he says is telling in that regard. Any substantial defense risks falling apart and forcing Republicans to account for the thing they said before.
And to the extent the evidence ultimately is as clear-cut and damning as Trump’s own former attorney general William P. Barr suggests it is, it’s just much easier to make a process argument.
But regardless of the arguments being offered, we have a political party that is rather blindly pot committed to the idea that this whole investigation is wrong. What the indictment means is that it will actually have to fill in those details at some point — even if that point isn’t today.
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