Letters from an American - July 15, 2024

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

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July 15, 2024. This morning, after a day of Republicans insisting that it is political polarization to suggest that Trump is a danger to our democracy, U.S. District Judge Eileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump in the last days of his presidency, dismissed the classified documents case against the former president. She wrote that Special Counsel Smith's appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution. Other federal courts have tested this argument and dismissed it, but Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife Ginny was part of the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, suggested earlier

this month that it could be the basis for getting rid of Jack Smith. Cannon cited Thomas repeatedly in her decision. When he left office in January 2021, Trump took with him to Mar-a-Lago hundreds of pages of classified national security documents, some of which bore the highest level of classification. be deposited, noted that many documents were missing from the materials Trump released to them and, in May 2021, emailed Trump's lawyers to get them back. When his lawyers tried to push him to do as the law required, they told FBI investigators, Trump answered, it's not theirs, it's mine. Finally, in December 2021, after Trump had personally gone through the documents, a Trump representative told NARA that they had found some records. And in January 2022, NARA retrieved 15 boxes from Mar-a-Lago. Archivists found more than 150 documents marked classified, making up hundreds of pages of classified national security information. By April, the Justice Department had convened a grand jury to

investigate Trump's removal of the documents. Trump's lawyers tried to keep those documents out of the hands of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, by claiming that they were covered by executive privilege. But in May 2022, NARA gave the FBI access to the records. In June 2022, Trump representative Christina Bobb certified that a diligent search at Mar-a-Lago had turned up nothing more, and that they were returning any and all documents they had found. Concerned about the sheer number of documents turning up, the Justice Department subpoenaed security videotapes, which showed people moving the documents. Federal officials obtained a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago. When they executed it in August 2022, they found 13 more

boxes with classified documents, a total of more than 11,000 government documents and photographs. They also found 48 empty folders labeled classified, but they did not check a locked closet on which Trump had recently changed the lock or a hidden room in Trump's bedroom. They found that the boxes, which contained the most valuable intelligence of the United States government, had been stored haphazardly in public areas, including a ballroom stage and a bathroom. including a ballroom stage and a bathroom. In November 2022, after Trump announced his presidential candidacy, an early announcement that many thought was an attempt to avoid criminal prosecution, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to oversee the two federal investigations that touched on the former president, thus deliberately moving those investigations

outside the department so they could not be seen as part of the presidential race. In June 2023, a federal grand jury indicted Trump on 37 criminal counts under the Espionage Act, including scheming to conceal documents. Three more charges were added the following month. Trump allegedly compromised national security documents from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence

Agency, surveillance imagery, the National Reconnaissance Office, surveillance and maps, the Department of Energy, nuclear weapons, and the Department of State and Bureau of Intelligence and Research, diplomatic intelligence. He was a one-man wrecking ball aimed at our national security. The case fell randomly to Cannon, who has appeared to be trying to delay the case since it came into her hands. Today, she threw it out altogether. Former Attorney General Eric Holder called Cannon's dismissal so bereft of legal reasoning as to be utterly absurd. Legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern called it an extreme outlier view with no basis in precedent and noted that Cannon's indefensible opinion will still serve its purpose of delaying this trial indefinitely.

Global politics scholar Brian Kloss wrote, Trump appoints judge. Trump does something that virtually all legal experts, including Trump's own former attorney general, see as a clear-cut felony. Judge that Trump appointed dismisses case. Washington Post global affairs columnist Ishan Tharoor wrote, the D.C. establishment would immediately point to the erosion of the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary. Special Counsel Jack Smith has said he will appeal Cannon's ruling. Trump responded to the news exactly as yesterday's Republican demands that Trump's opponents stop calling out his lawlessness suggested he would. He posted,

As we move forward in uniting our nation after the horrific events on Saturday, this dismissal of the lawless indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of all the witch hunts, the January 6 hoax in Washington, D.C. The Manhattan DA's zombie case. The New York AG scam. Fake claims about a woman I never met. A decades-old photo in a line with her then-husband does not count. And the Georgia perfect phone call charges. The Democrat Justice Department coordinated all of these political attacks, which are an election interference

conspiracy against Joe Biden's political opponent, me. Let us come together to end all weaponization of our justice system and make America great again. The Thomas opinion on which Cannon relied was his concurrence in the July 1st, 2024 decision in Donald J. Trump versus the United States. In that decision, the Supreme Court overturned the central principle of American democracy when it said that the U.S. president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of a president's official duties. Cannon's decision echoes the idea that Trump cannot be held accountable, even for what is allegedly the most serious breach of our national security in our history. Indeed, MAGA representative

Matt Gaetz, a Republican of Florida, posted a picture of Cannon on social media with the heading, Future Supreme Court Justice Cannon. Legal analyst Keith Boykin listed the many excuses and arguments Trump enablers have made over the years. He can't be prosecuted in office, Boykin wrote. He can't be impeached because the courts should decide. He's immune from prosecution after office. He can't be prosecuted by Biden's DOJ because that's lawfare, and he can't be prosecuted by a special counsel. We have created a dictator. Legal analyst Norm Eisen noted that Cannon's decision will boost Trump on the first day of the Republican National Convention, held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from Monday through Thursday of this week.

So will the weekend's shooting, which has inspired MAGA Republicans to insist that all their party members must rally around Trump. While Trump has been the presumptive nominee for years, that anointment was contested. Around 20% of Republican primary voters, who tend to be the most loyal and fervent partisans, consistently voted for former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley rather than Trump. Those voters seemed to be concentrated in the suburbs, thus making up a constituency Trump needs to win. On the other end of the party spectrum, the fringe right has been saying that Trump is too soft for them. Anti-Semitic white nationalist Nick Fuentes has told his followers that he and his groipers are fed up with Trump because they are sick of battling the Jews in the White House, battling the neocons, battling the Israel firsters. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and right-wing provocateur Ivan Reikland

have speculated for months that removing Trump from the running, they speculated about assassination, would open the way for Trump's far-right former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, and appeared to be putting pressure on Trump to name Flynn as vice president. Yesterday, Reikland posted on social media a Trump-Flynn 2024 graphic with the legend F-A-F-O under the words assassination proof. This afternoon, perhaps in hopes of avoiding an embarrassing floor fight, Trump dashed the hopes of both ends of the Republican spectrum by naming Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his vice presidential pick. Vance is 39 and was elected to the Senate

in 2022 with the help of $10 million from right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel. In the short time he has been in office, he has echoed Trump's big lie that the 2020 presidential race was stolen, has said that he does not believe in rape or incest exceptions for abortion bans and that people should stay in violent marriages, and has praised Project 2025. He is pro-Russia and against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It will be interesting to see how the RNC attempts to spin Vance as a candidate of unity, journalist Ann Applebaum wrote. The Fox News Channel helpfully reminded viewers that Vance has, in the past, said that Trump might be America's Hitler, might be a cynical a**hole, and is cultural heroine, noxious, and reprehensible. Still, factional differences might not matter in today's Republican Party. This afternoon, in the hall of the RNC convention,

attendees chanted, fight, fight, fight, as they punched an arm in the air in an eerie echo of Germany in the 1930s. Letters from an American was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dedham, Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss. Letters from an American was produced at Soundscape Productions,