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Donald Trump recently gave an interview to Megyn Kelly which covered the classified documents case, one of the four serious criminal indictments he faces. The interview was mostly fairly softball - hardly a credit to Kelly, who Trump has seriously insulted in gross sexual terms in the past - but the part about the documents case has caught everyone’s attention because in it, Trump seemed to admit his guilt multiple times, as in the following answer:
This is all about the Presidential Records Act. I’m allowed to have these documents. I’m allowed to take these documents, classified or not classified. And frankly, when I have them, they become unclassified. People think you have to go through a ritual. You don’t, at least in my opinion, you don’t. But it’s even beyond that. Because the Presidential Records Act allows you to do as president, only as president. Now, the other people that we talk about, including Biden, he wasn’t president. So what he did is a different standard. And he should have real problems. They really should be talking about that. Not about me. I did absolutely nothing wrong.
Pretty much nothing in this answer is true. The Presidential Records Act creates rules for the proper storage and archiving of government documents. It doesn’t say that they’re the personal property of the president. It certainly doesn’t allow someone to ignore subpoenas ordering the return of the document and to try to hide them from the government, as Trump allegedly did. Nor does something automatically become declassified through the mystical act of a president or former president stacking the documents in his bathroom.
Trump, who has a famous problem with the truth, often struggles in situations in which words can have criminal consequences. During the Mueller investigation, his lawyers refused to let him testify before a grand jury because, in the words of one, he is a “fucking liar”. Still, while the investigation was running Trump admitted multiple times in news interviews to acts which almost certainly rose to the level of obstruction of justice - such as firing FBI director James Comey in order to undermine investigations against him - but was saved by Mueller’s adherence to the long-standing rule that presidents cannot be prosecuted. Now he’s no longer president, Trump doesn’t enjoy that shield - and his words can actually be used to hold him accountable.
But I also think that something else is going on here. Trump is running his mouth off in this way not only or even mainly because he can’t help himself, but also for a bigger reason. And that reason is that he plans to use raw power, not a legal defense in a courtroom, to escape accountability for his crimes.
Although it’s difficult to predict how legal cases will unfold, Trump seems bang to rights in several of the cases he faces, the documents case especially. An “ordinary” person who did what he did - waving around classified military plans in public! - would probably already be in some form of custody and looking at a future which included a speedy trial and lengthy incarceration. Any attempt by his lawyers to get him off is most likely doomed to failure. That’s why Trump is making plans of his own.
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