It was the kind of utterance that makes professional transcribers question their career choice: " … there is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign, but I can always speak for myself - and the Russians, zero." When President Trump offered that response to a question at a press conference last week, it was the…
Much of the debate over former President Donald Trump's classified document stash at his Mar-a-Lago country club has centered on whether the information was really classified, or whether Trump, as he argues, could simply declassify them just by thinking about it — an argument substantially weakened by new voice recordings that suggest he knew how sensitive the documents were.
But that may not be the right question to ask, argued former federal prosecutor and legal anaylst Elliot Williams on CNN Wednesday, because Trump's actions are potentially illegal even if all of the documents were declassified.
"It's interesting that he is telling these people in the room, according to the reporting, that, you know, there is this document and this is what it's about, possible attack, plan for a possible attack on Iran, but he can't tell them about it because it's classified," said anchor Anderson Cooper. "If he had magically declassified it, as he said, in his mind or however else he has in various explanations, that would not be the case. He would feel free to tell them about it."
"Well, it would still be a crime, Anderson," said Williams. "There's one crime in the federal code for sharing classified information, that's number one, possessing government documents is itself a federal offense. But more importantly, possessing defense-specific information is itself a federal offense that carries with it a ten-year penalty. So, the mere fact that this might have been revealing or containing military information or troop movement, that itself makes it a crime."
The upshot, said Williams, is that "we've got to get out of this framing of talking about classification versus declassification because it really, for most of the crimes that could be investigated here, based on information that we have, don't really have anything to do with classification at all."
"What he had said here, at least assuming this recording says what it says, is the acknowledgment he admitted to possess the document and knew they were in his possession and knew that they were sensitive," said Williams. "And that is — you know, there's no such thing as a smoking gun in the real world. But it is incredibly valuable evidence because it speaks to intent, it speaks to knowledge, it speaks to what he knew that he had. So it is, as far as evidence goes, very, very powerful."
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Elliot Williams says Trump could face charges even if the documents were declassified www.youtube.com
Ron DeSantis has for months been on the receiving end of attacks from former President Donald Trump, but the Florida governor’s recent statements suggest he’s starting to hit back, The New York Times reports.
DeSantis during a Tuesday campaign event in Iowa appeared to be taunting Trump over the former president’s decision to sit on the sidelines amid the ongoing debt ceiling debate.
“I mean, are you leading from the front or are you waiting for polls to tell you what position to take?” DeSantis asked.
“I led from the front on this. I reviewed the deal. I spoke with people I trusted, and I put out a statement saying where I stand on it, and I didn’t need to put my finger in the wind.”
The Times report notes other recent DeSantis remarks suggesting the Florida governor is becoming more aggressive in his attacks on Trump.
DeSantis described a Trump spending bill as “grotesque,” called the former president’s criticism of him over his dispute with Disney “bizarre,” and said Trump’s criticism of the Florida governor’s COVID-19 policy was “ridiculous.”
Shane Goldmacher and Nicholas Nehamas write for The Times that DeSantis is facing a tough balancing act, noting that the above-mentioned comments were made during a short news conference, not a campaign event, and that he never mentioned Trump’s name when speaking to voters at four Iowa stops.
Goldmacher and Nehamas write that “The two-pronged approach reflects the remarkable degree to which his pathway to the nomination depends on his ability to win over — and not alienate — the significant bloc of Republican voters who still like Mr. Trump even if they are willing to consider an alternative.”
DeSantis’ more confrontational approach has not gone unnoticed.
The Des Moines Register acknowledged the shift in an article published under the headline “5 times Ron DeSantis took some pointed jabs at Donald Trump in Iowa while campaigning,” which reports that DeSantis at a Tuesday night campaign event said, “Leadership is not about entertainment. It's not about building a brand.”
DeSantis promised that the days of him being a Trump campaign punching bag are no more.
“I am going to counterpunch,” he said. “I’m going to fight back on it.”
The Florida governor suggested that Trump’s policies on the pandemic, the economy, and immigration show that the former president has compromised his “America first” agenda.
“I do think, unfortunately, he’s decided to move left on some of these issues,” DeSantis said.
“And I think it’s me that’s just being true to kind of what we said we would do.”
The Florida governor’s advisors attribute DeSantis’ more assertive posture to him being a declared candidate.
“But it is a notable shift,” Goldmacher and Nehamas write for The Times.
Turkey’s re-election this week of its authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdogan offers a warning that applies to other countries confronting the rise of right-wing populism, including the U.S., columnist Bret Stephens writes for The New York Times.
Erdogan’s re-election came amid skyrocketing unemployment that last year topped out at 85 percent and remains a stubborn 40 percent, along with the widespread perception that under Erdogan the Turkish government responded poorly to a series of earthquakes that killed an estimated 50,000 people.
Leaders typically don’t do well in elections held amid conditions such as these, but according to Stephens, Erdogan bucked that trend in large part as a result what French philosopher Jean-François Reve described as the “The totalitarian phenomenon.”
Reve said this phenomenon “is not to be understood without making an allowance for the thesis that some important part of every society consists of people who actively want tyranny: either to exercise it themselves or — much more mysteriously — to submit to it.”
Stephens writes that, “It’s an observation that should help guide our thinking about the re-election this week of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey. And it should serve as a warning about other places — including the Republican Party — where autocratic leaders, seemingly incompetent in many respects, are returning to power through democratic means.”
Stephens notes that a Turkish voter in an interview in The Economist explained support for Erdogan by saying, “We love him. … For the call to prayer, for our homes, for our headscarves.”
Stephens writes “That last line is telling, and not just because it gets to the importance of Erdogan’s Islamism as the secret of his success. It’s a rebuke to James Carville’s parochially American slogan, ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’
“Actually, no: It’s also God, tradition, values, identity, culture and the resentments that go with each. Only a denuded secular imagination fails to notice that there are things people care about more than their paychecks.”
Stephens in November wrote that after the midterms revealed Trump’s waning influence on the electorate that America was ready to move on from the former president in in a column published under the headline “Donald Trump is Finally Finished.”
IN OTHER NEWS: GOP voters know Trump violated national security law — but want to 'put it aside': reporter
“Silly me,” Stephens writes in the article. “The Trump movement isn’t built on the prospect of winning. It’s built on a sense of belonging: of being heard and seen; of being a thorn in the side to those you sense despise you and whom you despise in turn; of submission for the sake of representation. All the rest — victory or defeat, prosperity or misery — is details.
“Erdogan defied expectation because he understood this. He won’t be the last populist leader to do so.”
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