Trump 'tore up his get out of jail free card' and forced DOJ to indict: analysis

Donald Trump's apologists complain that he was prosecuted in a politicized scheme to keep him from being elected president again, but in truth political considerations stalled the Mar-a-Lago classified documents investigation until prosecutors had no choice but to indict him.

The ex-president is accused of bringing hundreds of classified documents to his private residence after leaving the White House and ignored government requests to return them for about a year. And the Department of Justice treated him far more leniently than Asia Janay Lavarello, a former civilian employee of the Defense Department, wrote New Yorker columnist Eric Levitz.

"There is no substantive reason why Lavarello’s removal of three classified dissertations from an embassy for a few days deserves to be punished more harshly than Trump’s retention of 197 highly classified documents for months," Levitz wrote. "It is clear, therefore, that the Justice Department prosecuted the ex-president much less aggressively than it would an ordinary citizen under the same circumstances.

"To the extent that political considerations influenced the DOJ’s handling of the case, they led the department to extend Trump extraordinary opportunities to extricate himself from legal peril so as to avoid the politically inflammatory spectacle of his prosecution."

Trump was given the opportunity to avoid charges if he returned those documents more than a year after leaving office, and ultimately he was charged with just 31 counts, corresponding to the number of highly classified documents he willfully kept until the FBI obtained them through a search warrant.

"The sad, strange truth of Trump’s case is that the Justice Department tried to let him get away with a crime but the ex-president would not let it," Levitz wrote. "Rather, he tore up his 'get out of jail free' card so flamboyantly that the DOJ had little choice but to bring charges."