Ex-U.S. President Donald Trump had enough legal problems without this latest one. The Department of Justice has been investigating him for having taken hundreds of classified government documents when he exited the White House and stored them in his resort-residence at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. The National Archives learned about it soon afterwards and began a lengthy process of asking for their return. But like so many presidential matters, Trump has been obstinate about it and refused. Yet this is a matter of national security. Many of those documents are very highly classified, with some being top secret. We now learn that some involved nuclear weapons secrets, even about foreign governments which could include both our allies and enemies. So, the big question about this chaos is, “Why did he take them?”
To answer this question is mere speculation so far since we the public have no other information about it. Some say it was only because Trump likes to keep things to show off to people. Heh, I don’t think Donald Trump is nearly as smart as he thinks he is; however, I think he is smart enough to realize that he could do some serious time in prison by taking top secret U.S. government documents just to be a show off with them and therefore he wouldn’t take them for only that reason. And I doubt he would rely on the defense that he had declared them as non-classified, thereby hoping to avoid liability, which certainly will not fly.
So, it makes more sense to me that Donald Trump has had a more sinister reason for taking these government documents that don’t belong him at all. But what could it be?
Michael Cohen–Trump’s “personal lawyer and fixit man” for ten years–has come forward this week with what I think may be a very possible reason that Trump took the docs. Cohen appeared Wednesday on MSNBC and alleged, “This is all about him still remaining relevant and exerting the power over the United States as extortion in the event you indict me or members of my family. If you indict me or try to incarcerate me, I have nuclear secrets that I have instructed some of my followers to turn over to our adversaries.” Cohen even thinks Trump has made multiple copies of some of these documents and has them stored in various locations, including kept by his children.
Wow! I’ve been thinking this myself for the past few weeks. But could Trump really go that far in the other direction from his motto to Make America Great Again? Since being the U.S. president, the guy has proved himself to be such a big liar and hypocrite that maybe he could.
But then, this came from Michael Cohen, who went to prison three years (though some of it was house arrest) partly for lying to Congress. But some of that was to protect Trump about illegal campaign financing regarding paying off the porn star Stormy and another woman for alleged sexual trysts. However, it needs to be considered that Cohen has been somewhat rehabilitated due to all of this. Plus, he knows The Donald psyche about as well as anybody.
But now, someone perhaps more believable than Cohen came forward yesterday on CNN and affirmed what Cohen says. It’s Tim Kaine, the former Democratic Governor of Virginia and now its U.S. Senator who was the vice-presidential running mate of former First Lady Hilary Clinton for the presidential election that Trump won in 2016. Kaine revealed, “My gut tells me the reason that Donald Trump took all this classified information—I’m on the armed services and foreign relations committees. I spend a lot of time in secure Senate facilities. I know what this information is like. The reason Trump took this with him to Florida was probably to try to either sell it or have it as a get-out-of-jail-free card.” Kaine warned, “it’s really important that we impose accountability for this.”
If Cohen and Kaine are right, and Trump plays this ace up his sleeve if indicted, that might be regarded as treason. But could Trump thereby have the upper hand over the U.S. government if he has very sensitive documents involving secrets of foreign governments regarding warfare and weapons? He could wrestle the U.S. government into a such an awkward position that it might have to cry “Uncle.” How would that affect future U.S. government foreign relations? Not so good.
In my book, Bible Predicts Trump Fall–which is a collection of 200 posts I made of Trump throughout his presidency–I cited multiple times about Donald Trump and his supporters yelling at his political rallies about Hilary Clinton, “Lock her up.” I then quoted what Jesus taught about hypocritical judging. He said in his Sermon on the Mount, “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get” (Matthew 7.1-2 NRSV).
Many people misunderstand this statement of Jesus because they stop there, claiming Jesus taught against all judging, and thereby remove this teaching from Jesus’ context. For he then explained most graphically with hyperbole about trying to take a speck out of someone’s eye when you have a log in your own eye (Matt. 7.3-4). He exclaimed, “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye” (v. 5). So, Jesus didn’t condemn judging; rather, he condemned doing it hypocritically.
That’s what Republican Trump was doing all that time, and now we really see it. He had claimed during the 2016 presidential campaign that his Democratic opponent, Hilary Clinton, should be prosecuted and imprisoned for her misuse of an email server. But the FBI investigated it and cleared her. Plus, she certainly did it my mistake, thus without any intention of breaking U.S. laws, and she afterwards admitted her mistake. Those emails are similar to Trump taking these documents, so that this situation–Trump criticizing Clinton’s email use and Trump taking these documents–is a classic case of hypocrisy which Jesus taught against.
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