Let’s play a quick game of who said this:
“On political corruption, we are going to restore honor to our government. In my administration, I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.”
Here’s a hint: The same person who said this in August 2016 was found to be holding, as a private citizen, 11 sets of classified material, including four sets regarded as top secret, in an unattended storage room at his Florida estate. It took a search warrant to pry all these records from his grimy meat hooks.
The buffoon in question, obviously, would be one Donald John Trump, who, as bad luck would have it, was once the president of the United States and has goo-goo eyes for returning to that post once again.
Now, rather than bowing to the widely held precept that no one is above the law, Trump is forever bellyaching over the fallout that has resulted from his determination to persistently glom onto sensitive government material despite the existence of a federal law that specifically prohibits possession of national defense information, classified or not, punishable by up to 10 years in prison for each count.

Obviously, the Trumpster finds himself in tall grass here and some folks are aghast and scandalized over the turn of events, including the likes of Sen. Rand Paul, R-Bowling Green, and Rep. James Comer, R-Tomplinsville, or Frankfort, or DC, or choose from column A or column B, ranking member on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Both lawmakers committed to upholding the laws of this great land, are just understandably enraged by the circumstances surrounding a former president – now, once again, a private citizen – stowing national secrets in what amounts to a hidey-hole in some garish Valhalla called Mar-a-Lago.
And, by gosh, they intend to do something about it.
Paul is so upset he wants to repeal the Espionage Act of 1917, the law that deals with, among other things the illicit possession of sensitive government material. Paul called the law “an egregious afront to the First Amendment,” oddly holding his fire on that statute until after it appeared his one-time golfing buddy, Trump, may have violated it.
Comer is even more dismayed over the sad set of circumstances, demanding an investigation into the National Archives to determine why it dropped a dime on his hero by notifying the FBI about the missing documents in the first place. Our boy Jamie then raised questions about the FBI itself, suggesting the agency might need to forfeit some of its funding for removing government material from Mar-a-Lago that didn’t belong to the ex-president.
Besides…HUNTER BIDEN!!!
“The FBI and NARA’s (National Archives and Records Administration) actions – apparently to enforce the Presidential Records Act – are so contrary to the customary treatment of former administration that it begs scrutiny into whether a political motivation underlay the raid,” Comer wrote in a letter to Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-NY, chair of the Oversight panel.
A quick review quickly establishes that neither of these two Kentucky rocket scientists managed to discern the true meaning of this exercise – that the former president they are devoted to, like an addict to a needle, might be a crook.
Neither Paul nor Comer – the subject of a recent kissy-face profile in Politico that should embarrass the publication through the remainder of its publication days – expressed even a modicum of disgust or issued so much as a discreet tsk-tsk to the all too obvious possibility that the 45th president of the United States not only broke the law but did so intentionally – the National Archives had sought the return of the material since at least February and had been given the high hat by the notorious Lord of Mar-a-Lago.
Neither Paul nor Comer is expressing anything approaching remorse for Trump’s questionable choices because they’re too busy conjuring up ways to keep his orange backside out of the hoosegow. To do that they have gone so far, Comer in particular, to attack law enforcement for doing its job.
“We’re very frustrated with a lot of things within the FBI right now,” Comer said during an appearance on Newsmax, one of the regular far-right networks he chooses to plant his mug on. “We’re just starting to go down line-by-line on the Oversight Committee with their expenses and this is the first thing that popped out.”
Defund the FBI? Now there’s a slogan our boy Jamie can carry to the bank. He can march right alongside those folks who want to defund the police, shouting and raising a fist, just because the agency executed a legally issued search warrant from a federal magistrate in Florida to search the residence of an elderly Florida golfer and the man didn’t get shot.
Of course, that might have been because he’s White.
But let’s move on.
Trump is no longer the president, a position that provides a limited amount of cover while in office. He ain’t there no more and it will likely be left to a federal grand jury to determine whether or not he should be charged with committing a felony.
Like it or not, that’s the American way.
Both Paul and Comer are employing rather simplistic diversionary tactics here to move attention from the suspected perpetrator and toward those who legitimately got him in the spot where he’d better call Saul. To these two gents, the real crime wasn’t committed by Trump. The real crime was committed by the FBI and the National Archives seeking to bring him to justice.
To be reasonable and perfectly fair, Paul isn’t totally off-base in regard to the Espionage Act. It was used, for instance, to send Eugene V. Debs, five-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party, to prison on phony-baloney sedition charges in 1918 for basically opposing U.S. entry into WWI. It is, as Paul rightfully maintains, overbroad and, as in the Debs case, can be an infringement on the First Amendment.
But the sins of the Espionage Act have nothing to do with the alleged sins of Donald James Trump. The federal government not only owns the authority but the obligation to hold its state secrets tight, not only for national security but to preserve the lives of those whose names may be revealed in any records unnecessarily laid bare, thus placing them in jeopardy.
It wasn’t the records section of the Espionage Act that thwarted poor Debs, which has since been amended. An argument can certainly be made the law needs an overhaul to confront issues dealing with this technological age. But there is no logic to be found in undermining a section simply for the prospect of releasing Trump from any of his possible wrongdoings.
Comer, with his eyes set on some higher office – maybe governor, maybe speaker of the House, who knows – is proving to be a first-class hack, willing to do what it takes to move his party and personal ambitions forward regardless of the damage it might cause anyone else, deserved or not. He has already made it clear that should he assume the chair of the House Oversight Committee – and God help us all – his sole purpose will be to disrupt the efforts of President Biden and others who actually want to get something done.
And he’s such a clever boy.
It might just be that Trump is being treated in a manner “contrary to the customary treatment of former administration” because he’s acting in a manner contrary to that of a former president. It wasn’t a “raid,” it was the legal execution of a search warrant, issued because there was probable cause to think a crime might have been committed.
Think about that when you’re ripping the National Archives and picking the pocket of the FBI.
You are absolutely right. It almost amuses me that even now, Trump is demanding this and that, and still thinks he can order agencies around like a toddler demanding his way. This is his usual bullying MOA . Perhaps he is delusional and doesn’t grasp the idea that he isn’t president any more. Let us earnestly hope and pray that he rides off into the sunset, sooner than later
Or better yet- ends up in the hoosegow with his mafioso family and their stooges
LOCK THEM UP!