NEWS
ANALYSIS
In Legal Peril, Trump Tries to Shift the
Spotlight to Biden
Donald J. Trump, who is under indictment, is trying to
undermine the American justice system by lashing out at his successor.
Michael D.
Shear
By Michael
D. Shear
Reporting
from Washington
June 14,
2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/14/us/politics/trump-indictment-biden.html
Under
indictment and enraged, former President Donald J. Trump — with the help of
Republican allies, social media supporters and Fox News — is lashing out at his
successor in the hopes of undermining the charges against him.
“A corrupt
sitting president!” Mr. Trump blared on Tuesday night after being arrested and
pleading not guilty in Miami. “The Biden administration has turned us into a
banana republic,” one of his longtime advisers wrote in a fund-raising email.
“Wannabe dictator,” read a chyron on Fox News, accusing Mr. Biden of having his
political rival arrested.
The
accusations against Mr. Biden are being presented without any evidence that
they are true, and Mr. Trump’s claims of an unfair prosecution came even after
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed a special counsel specifically to
insulate the inquiries from political considerations.
But that
hardly seems to be the point for Mr. Trump and his allies as they make a
concerted effort to smear Mr. Biden and erode confidence in the legal system.
Just hours after his arraignment, Mr. Trump promised payback if he wins the
White House in 2024.
“I will
appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the
history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime
family,” Mr. Trump said during remarks at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.
On Twitter,
the former president’s followers used words like “traitor,” “disgrace,”
“corrupt” and “biggest liar” to describe the current president. And while Fox
News said on Wednesday that the “wannabe dictator” headline was “taken down
immediately” and addressed, the network counts Mr. Trump’s many followers as
loyal viewers.
The
response from Mr. Biden and his advisers has been studious silence.
The
president has vowed not to give the slightest hint that he is interfering in
the criminal case against Mr. Trump, and he has ordered his White House aides
and campaign staff members not to comment. That decision has quieted what is
usually a robust rapid response team that aims to counter Republican attacks.
New
revelations. The 49-page indictment against Donald Trump and a personal aide,
Walt Nauta, revealed a host of potentially devastating new details in the
Justice Department’s inquiry into the former president’s mishandling of
classified documents. Here are some of the most significant allegations:
There was a
stunning pattern of obstruction. Prosecutors say Trump willfully ignored a May
2022 subpoena requiring him to return the documents — and took extraordinary
steps to obstruct investigators. The indictment details how Nauta, at Trump’s
direction, moved 64 boxes of documents so that Trump’s lawyer could not find
them.
Boxes of documents
were stored in a bathroom. In April 2021, Trump’s employees needed to move
dozens of boxes from a ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago estate. “There is still a
little room in the shower where his other stuff is,” one aide texted another.
The boxes were hauled to a small bathroom and piled up nearly to the tiny
chandelier next to the toilet.
Documents
were stored sloppily. The indictment shows a picture of a box of top secret
national security documents that in 2021 had spilled onto the floor of a
Mar-a-Lago storage room accessible to many of the resort’s employees.
Trump made
a “plucking motion.” The indictment recounts how Trump and his lawyer discussed
what to do with a folder of 38 documents with classification markings. The
lawyer said Trump made a “plucking motion” that implied, “why don’t you take
them with you to your hotel room and if there’s anything really bad in there,
like, you know, pluck it out.”
Trump was
recorded sharing secrets. The indictment says Trump was recorded at his golf
club in Bedminster, N.J., showing off secret U.S. battle plans to a writer.
Trump described the material as “highly confidential” and “secret,” while
admitting it had not been declassified.
Trump
showed a secret map to a staff member. In August or September 2021, Trump
shared a top secret military map with a staff member at his political action
committee who did not have a security clearance; he warned the person not to
“get too close.”
One of
Trump’s lawyers is a key witness. Some of the most potentially damning evidence
against the former president came from notes made by one of his lawyers, M.
Evan Corcoran. The lawyer’s notes essentially gave prosecutors a road map to
building their case.
The
president’s press aides responsible for instantly blasting out pro-Biden
commentary to reporters have gone dark. Even Senator Chuck Schumer, the
majority leader, issued a terse “no comment” on Wednesday.
Jill Biden,
the first lady, broke the code of silence on Monday, telling donors at a
fund-raiser in New York that she was shocked that Republicans were not bothered
by Mr. Trump’s indictment. “My heart feels so broken by a lot of the headlines
that we see on the news,” she said at the event, according to The Associated
Press.
The
attorney general also weighed in — somewhat — on Wednesday with his first
public comments since Mr. Trump was charged. He took the opportunity to defend
Jack Smith, the special counsel, as “a veteran career prosecutor.”
“He has
assembled a group of experienced and talented prosecutors and agents who share
his commitment to integrity and the rule of law,” Mr. Garland said.
Still, the
no-comment strategy out of the White House is reminiscent of the determined
silence by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who investigated Russian
interference in the 2016 election and links between Russian operatives and Mr.
Trump’s campaign. Mr. Mueller said virtually nothing for more than a year as
Mr. Trump and his allies attacked his investigation and his motives.
Like Mr.
Mueller’s approach, Mr. Biden’s refusal to comment is intended to make sure he
does not provide ammunition that his adversaries can try to use to undermine
his credibility and integrity.
But in the
end, the sustained assault on Mr. Mueller and his investigation helped Mr.
Trump create a false narrative and survive the damning revelations contained in
the more than 400-page report bearing the prosecutor’s name.
On
Wednesday, when a reporter noted that Mr. Trump had accused Mr. Biden of “having
him arrested, effectively directing his arrest,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White
House press secretary, said, “I’m not going to comment.”
Eddie Vale,
a longtime Democratic strategist, said the White House position made sense,
given the need to avoid even the hint that Mr. Biden was meddling in Mr.
Trump’s case.
But he said
members of outside Democratic groups would most likely begin coming to Mr.
Biden’s defense if the attacks continued.
“This is
such a charged and hot subject,” Mr. Vale said. “There’s nothing to be gained
by weighing in. But I think as it goes on, you will have folks on the outer
circle weighing in.”
Strategists
for Mr. Trump promise that the attacks will continue.
Chris
LaCivita, a senior campaign consultant for Mr. Trump, said on Wednesday that it
was fair to assign responsibility for the investigation to Mr. Biden because
the special counsel was appointed by Mr. Biden’s attorney general.
“There’s a
thing called in government, the chain of command,” he said.
America
First Legal, the pro-Trump group founded by Stephen Miller, the architect of
the former president’s immigration agenda, sent out a fund-raising appeal on
Wednesday morning, using the indictment as a rallying cry.
The theme
has been echoed by Mr. Trump’s staunchest allies in Congress, who trained their
ire on Mr. Biden even as they also railed against the Justice Department, the
F.B.I., the “mainstream media” and Democrats generally.
Most of
them, it seemed, were trying to goad Mr. Biden into a reaction.
“I, and
every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump
against this grave injustice,” tweeted Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the leading
Republican in Congress.
Mr. Biden
has so far focused on governing.
On Tuesday,
the president met with Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of NATO, in the
Oval Office. Later, he hosted a Juneteenth concert on the South Lawn of the
White House, an event where it was easy to avoid the subject of Mr. Trump.
“To me,
making Juneteenth a federal holiday wasn’t just a symbolic gesture,” Mr. Biden
told the crowd in brief remarks. “It was a statement of fact for this country
to acknowledge the original sin of slavery.”
But it is
likely to get more difficult to refrain from wading into the Trump situation.
On
Saturday, the president is scheduled to attend a political rally with union
supporters in Philadelphia. It is the kind of event where he would be expected
to draw the contrast between himself and his rivals.
Mr. Biden
may be able to navigate that issue in the short term; Mr. Trump has a long way
to go to win the Republican nomination.
But if he
does become Mr. Biden’s opponent for the presidency again, the strategy of
avoidance may eventually have to change.
As the
first lady told donors at an event in California — referring to Mr. Trump’s
four-year term in the White House: “We cannot go back to those dark days. And
with your help, we won’t go back.”
Michael D.
Shear
Michael D.
Shear is a veteran White House correspondent and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner
who was a member of the team that won the Public Service Medal for Covid
coverage in 2020. He is the co-author of “Border Wars: Inside Trump's Assault
on Immigration.” More about Michael D. Shear
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