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August 10, 2022

I’ve written twice that Donald Trump should not be the next Republican nominee for President (here and here). I intended to write a counterpoint essay extolling Donald Trump as a devil’s advocate’s exercise. But with Inspector Javert Wray signing off on the raid at Trump’s Florida residence, no doubt enthusiastically approved by Grand Inquisitor Torquemada Garland, this has lost its academic flavor. Rather, I rise to praise Donald Trump as the necessary candidate for the Republican Party to oppose whatever infernal chimera Acheron will deliver up as The Donald’s hapless opponent.

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In case you’re wondering, I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore. It’s time to bury the “Democrat” Party. And Donald Trump is the right undertaker. Let’s start with the justification (i.e., excuse) for the raid.

Supposedly, President Trump improperly took with him various documents that were classified or subject to the Federal Records Act. This would make him guilty of violating 18 U.S.C. § 2071. This would then make him ineligible to run in 2024. But that’s a pipe dream. 18 U.S.C. § 2071 does not apply to the Presidency. The paper I just cited was written to answer Republican vapors about disqualifying Hillary Clinton in the email scandal. But we’re not done.

President Trump, as the ultimate classification authority, has the unquestionable authority to declassify anything he wants to declassify. If he says it’s no longer a secret, nobody can question it. And, as the President, he doesn’t have to file any papers with anyone to do it.

Image: Donald Trump by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.

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The supposedly confidential papers stolen from Trump’s safe are not subject to the Federal Records Act because they are copies of papers that exist in other places. And by definition, if the President removes them from the White House to another place, they are no longer classified. His action, taken before the new occupant was sworn in, was completely lawful. The act of removing them from a SCIF (Secure Compartmented Information Facility, e.g. the White House) by the only person lawfully empowered to do so, is not subject to prosecution. But the insane Left will use it as a way to declare him unfit.

We’ve already seen this movie, so let’s consider the facts. Maggie Haberman is claiming that Trump tore up and flushed notes down a toilet. She even has a photo in her upcoming book. The fact that every hit job like that has been proven false indicates how seriously (Not!) we should consider her allegations. But the more important issue is that even if that photo was somehow taken in the White House, we have no evidence that it’s not PhotoShopped or a document subject to the Federal Records Act. The White House has multiple shredders, so disposing of scratched notes would be via shredder, not the toilet. So Haberman is asking us to believe three impossible things before breakfast.

Ultimately, we must consider why the Left is so obsessed with Donald Trump. It’s certainly not because he violated any laws. Just for comparison, while a small sliver of the Right still actively pushes for Hillary Clinton to be prosecuted, here we’re seeing the entire Democrat party in full cry. These Baskervilles have only a single target, without whom they have nothing to distract a tortured public from the destruction they are wreaking. And that distraction is the only hope they have of winning this fall’s election. If they can stir enough fear, votes may swing their way.

The raid on Mar-a-Lago is the act of a set of political actors who have no regard for the law, and who serve the god of big government. They pray daily that they will be seated in positions of power where they can prove their self-importance to their deity. None of them have the slightest concern for real Americans who actually work to provide for their families after the demigods in DC have extracted their pound (or three) of flesh. Why else would doubling the size of the IRS be on their now-fulfilled short-term wish list?

Returning to the Donald, my greatest complaint against him has been that he didn’t choose the correct staff. But having been burned, he’s now prepared to deal with the Swamp. The much bandied-about Schedule F rule would likely be his first move. Roughly 50,000 federal employees with policy-making authority would be reclassified into Schedule F, making them “at-will” employees. Because they have actively opposed Trump at every turn, he might fire them en masse, draining the Swamp in a single blow.

This would certainly be met with lawsuits, but all those run up against the first sentence of Article II of the Constitution. “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Put bluntly, that means he doesn’t even need Schedule F, but Schedule F would make things cleaner. And the Civil Service Act notwithstanding, all those procedures that make it almost impossible to fire anyone are unconstitutional. We don’t need Donald Trump to implement Schedule F. Ron DeSantis could do it just as easily. But there is one thing only Donald Trump can do.