Commentary
Trump Could Run Again
Unless you are a news wonk, who closely follows politics, the name Marc Elias won’t mean anything to you, but you need to know that he is among those on the left who continue to press for the political demise of former President Trump.
As Hillary Clinton’s campaign attorney, Elias was involved in the funding of the since discredited Steele dossier, developed to bring down the Trump presidency with a tale of Russian collusion.
Following the raid, Elias, in a feeble attempt to draw the media into what he referred to as a “potential blockbuster in American politics,” tweeted that Trump’s handling of the classified documents, disqualifies him from the 2024 elections.
Elia cited 18 U.S.C. Section 20761(b), that covers someone who “willfully and unlawfully” mishandles records, noting that on conviction, the defendant “shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.
That may have been good news to RINO Liz Cheney, who has stated that her goal is to keep the former president from the White House, but she and Elias need to consult the Constitution.
Following a rebuke of this by Jonathan Turley, George Washington University law professor, two individuals – David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey – who practice appellate and constitutional law in Washington, published an op-ed in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal stating the Constitution forbids that result with respect to the presidency.
“Even if the government could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Trump deliberately mishandled government documents know this to be a violation of a federal statute – a difficult task since the Presidential Records Act itself guarantees his access to his presidential records and former presidents are generally entitled to receive classified information – a court couldn’t disqualify him from serving as president,” Rivkin and Casey wrote.
“If preventing Mr. Trump from running in 2024 was the purpose of the Mar-A-Lago search,” the pair noted, “the government wasted its time and the taxpayers’ resources.”
The Scope of the Raid Search
While imagining with disgust those FBI agents searching former First Lady Melania Trump’s wardrobe during their raid on Mar-A-Lago, I recalled that another first lady, Hillary Clinton, was also the subject of a search for documents.
A Look Back
The Clinton search, however, was under entirely different circumstances. There was a near two-year search and subpoenas for the billing records covering her Whitewater land venture during her days with the Rose Law Firm.
On January 5, 1996, an aide to Clinton, who was also the office manager at Rose, discovered 115 pages relating to Clinton’s involvement in a closet on the third floor of the White House private residence. Of course, Clinton said she was unaware of their storage there.
The aide, Carolyn Huber, testified that she placed the documents in the White House closet after taking them from the files of Vincent Foster following his death.
Government examiners found that Madison Guaranty, the savings and loan, represented by Clinton, failed in 1989 at a cost to taxpayers of more than $60 million, was riddled with corruption.
The statute of limitations expired for lawsuits involving those who fraudulently advised the savings and loan, and the Resolution Trust Corporation, the agency set up to handle bailout, announced that it would not bring a civil lawsuit against President Clinton or the first lady for the losses.
Back to Mar-A-Lago
Fellow blogger, Ann Althouse, noted: “I’m not surprised that a search extends into a woman’s most intimate space – how could searches be effective if the woman’s closet were off limits? But I recognize this is something that hits onlooker hard. It makes the government seem more brutal if you picture its agents rooting around in the lady’s underwear drawer. This is the kind of image that can have a powerfully persuasive effect that transcends reason.”
Althouse reminded her readers, as I did, that the agents said they had “full access to everything. We can go everywhere,” but what was the sense of the raid?
Will we ever see the video recordings of the agents performing the search?
Finally … were you impressed with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s statement on the raid Thursday? Did we ever dodge a bullet when he wasn’t permitted a seat on our Supreme Court.
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
