The irony that shrouds Donald J. Trump’s indictment by a special counsel over his pilfering of classified documents is rich beyond all measure.
Think about this for just a moment because that’s all it will take for you to grasp what I’m talking about.
Trump won the 2016 presidential election essentially on a single issue, which is that he was able to tar Hillary Clinton with an undeserved label of crook because of those emails that disappeared into thin air. He spoke with intimate knowledge of the gravity of keeping classified documents away from the proper authorities.
He knew of the consequences that such a transgression could bring. He stood before campaign rally crowds that chanted “Lock her up!” It became a sort of political mantra for the first-time politician.
To be clear, what Clinton did while serving as secretary of state pales in comparison to what the indictments allege that Trump did upon departing the White House in January 2021. The indictment quote Trump extensively in the narrative that special counsel Jack Smith assembled in crafting the accusation.
Now the former POTUS says he did “nothing wrong.” Former Attorney General William Barr has said just recently that in “no universe is it possible” to excuse the taking of national security secrets, which Trump did, and store them as cavalierly as he did in his Florida mansion.
Again the irony abounds. Trump knew in 2016 that such behavior was wrong, that it was illegal and that it could land a POTUS or a former POTUS in prison.
Wow! As a former U.S. solicitor general, Neil Katyal, noted this afternoon: “I’m glad I’m a Hindu, because this sure sounds like karma.”