Trump took White House records. Is that the same as Hillary's emails?
By: Kurt Bardella (USA TODAY)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
You would think Republicans would be chanting 'Lock Him Up' and calling for hearings with anyone who was part of the Trump White House. But nothing.
Kurt Bardella Opinion columnist
Let's play a game. When did the following headlines run?
"Documents Improperly Taken from White House to Archives."
"National Archives had to retrieve White House records" from private property.
If you didn't know any better, you might think they were from the 2016 presidential campaign.
Remember when, in October 2016, House Republicans launched a series of hearings attacking the then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over her emails?
Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, who now serves as the lead Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, fumed that "Hillary Clinton gets treated different than anybody else." Another member of the panel stated, "This is the reason for this hearing - the sloppiness, the messiness, and the ability for a secretary of State to do something that shouldn't have been done." Another Republican weighed in, "I want to know about the destruction - the hammering of BlackBerrys." The panel's chairman at the time, Jason Chaffetz, who can now be seen espousing self-righteous nonsense of Fox News, attacked Clinton, "The secretary had a choice. She chose to not abide by the rules of the State Department."
Taping Trump's documents back together
And yet, here we are, in 2022 and we have:
The New York Times: "Trump Gives Documents Improperly Taken from White House to Archives."
The Washington Post: "National Archives had to retrieve Trump White House records from Mar-a-Lago."
And just for good measure, we have this gem from 2018 via Politico, "Meet the guys who tape Trump's papers back together," and this piece from The Times in 2019: "Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump Use Private Accounts for Official Business, Their Lawyer Says."
That's right, from the same forces that brought you the chorus of "Hillary's emails" and the smash hit "Lock Her Up" comes a new spin on an old song, "Do As I Say, Not As I Do."
As reported by The Post, "The National Archives and Records Administration last month retrieved 15 boxes of documents and other items from former president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence because the material should have been turned over to the agency when he left the White House, Archives officials said Monday. … The Archives has struggled to cope with a president who flouted document retention requirements and frequently ripped up official documents, leaving hundreds of pages taped back together - or some that arrived at the Archives still in pieces."
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The Times reporting added, "More recently, in response to the House select committee investigation into the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, Mr. Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, provided hundreds of pages of documents, some of which came from his personal cellphone. The committee said it had questions about why Mr. Meadows had used a personal cellphone, a Signal account and two personal Gmail accounts to conduct official business, and whether he had properly turned over all records from those accounts to the National Archives."
Bombshell revelations
Given these bombshell revelations, coupled with their concern for federal government record-keeping compliance, you would think Republicans would be foaming at the mouth, chanting "Lock Him Up" and calling for an immediate series of hearings and subpoenas to be issued to anyone who was a part of the Trump White House.
And yet, nothing. Crickets. Silence.
Jim Jordan isn't grand-standing on Fox News calling Donald Trump incompetent or a liar or "absolutely wrong."
House Republicans aren't clamoring for an FBI or Department of Justice investigation into the destruction of official records and use of personal devices.
The very Republicans who led the charge for investigations into Clinton's emails don't have a damn thing to say about what Trump and other senior administration officials did in apparent violation of the Presidential Records Act (PRA).
The ball now falls into the court of congressional Democrats, specifically, those at the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which has jurisdiction over the PRA. They may be inclined to just sit this one out and allow for the work of the Jan. 6 committee to unfold. But it is worth noting that at one point in time, Republicans in Congress had half a dozen committees investigating Clinton. They flooded the zone and held a tsunami of hearings over the course of five years. All of which was designed to injure the political fortunes of the Democratic front-runner for president.
During the Obama years, Republicans were fond of beginning their oversight hearings by reciting a mission statement: "Our solemn responsibility is to hold government accountable to taxpayers, because taxpayers have a right to know what they get from their government. We will work tirelessly, in partnership with citizen-watchdogs, to deliver the facts to the American people and bring genuine reform to the federal bureaucracy."
I for one think it's time Democrats used Republicans' own words against them and went to work.
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Lock Him Up !
I'm more concerned about the documents the mango maniac tore up or destroyed, harder to get those back. that's not even mentioning the alternative account emails exchanged between his defective spawn, the criminal administration hacks, and anti-democracy cultists in DC.
The trumpturd had a team that followed him around with scotch tape because the fuckhead would tear up documents constantly.
they knew they couldn't afford a legal defense team for them to stay out jail, now that most are out of jobs.
Yep. Who knows what went missing or what was on all the backhanded channels they were using.
LOCK HIM UP
... then fuck him up.
It's worse. Hillary was not POTUS. Hillary's emails were recovered, Trump's can't be especially the ones he ate . Trump had the specific intent to destroy the papers knowing that the action was illegal.
with the very first email they sent on an outside IP...
But conservatives trust Trump and won't believe he did anything bad against them. They know he's a lying cheating sack of shit, but they believe he's a lying cheating sack of shit FOR them and their agenda. They see him as the Robin Hood of American politics, stealing, lying and cheating on their behalf so he's become a folk hero to right wing racist white conservative Christians everywhere. Like was pointed out, he could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Ave and his supporters wouldn't care as long as he's furthering their warped right wing bigoted white conservative Christian agenda.
Even though he and his administration also used a private email server to conduct business with. Just like they accuse Hillary of doing.
I love your ability to 'get it in a nutshell'. Perfect!
I disagree. Anyone who has actually been paying attention to the GOP for the last decade or more already know that GOP hypocrisy has no bounds and they have no shame in displaying it regularly. To them it's their "I don't give a fuck" attitude which they're proud of. They didn't give a fuck that they cried and used the excuse that a supreme court justice shouldn't be chosen by a President in the near year preceding a Presidential election, but then swept in ACB just weeks before the election. They don't give a fuck that they spent years shouting "lock her up" about Hillary for having a private email server that a handful of work emails were found on but when Jared and Ivanka are caught regularly using their private accounts for official business they couldn't care less. Of course they're going to have a double standard, of course they are going to complain when their opponents do something they can attack them for but ignore the same conduct when it comes from their own party. This is the kind of hypocrisy Americans with more than half a brain have come to expect from the GOP so no surprises here.
Thread 5 deleted at commenters request.
Americans have learned to expect only the worst from the Trump crime family.
And their criminal enterprise of an 'administration' What a sham
Haven't you guys learned that trumpublicans don't commit crimes? Only dems commit crimes. /sarc
One poster says crime only happens in blue cities. /sarc
Well of course. I mean, everyone knows that the reds are gods chosen and can do no wrong and will allow no wrong.
Maybe this is why "Pendulum" McConnell is changing his tune yet again. In any event, I'd be really surprised if any documents that might have been reason to put Trump in jail haven't "mysteriously" disappeared.
Keep running on Trump.
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I think that as long as Trump hints that he may run again in 2024, and as long as he keeps holding rallies and keeps pumping up his "army" he is deliberately doing everything he can to keep himself front and centre, and many Republican lawmakers have appeared to be supportive of him. He is still being investigated for alleged crimes, and there is no doubt that the Jan6 committee is gathering what evidence they can to determine the cause of what many think was incited by him, he is going to continue to be targeted news. Sure, the Republicans are not going to be so vociferous about it as the Democrats, for obvious reasons.