My Quick and Dirty Reaction to a Major Event in American Political History
PLUS: A review of the British crime drama "Happy Valley"
I had nearly finished a rather dull article about the recent turmoil at CNN when the indictment in the case concerning Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents was unsealed Friday afternoon. After that bombshell, publishing on any other topic struck me as rather pointless, so here’s my instant reaction to that news. (If you’re still interested in that piece on CNN and the challenges attendant to reporting on a demagogue, listen to the June 9 episode of NPR’s On the Media. And sorry for the delay in getting this to you; late-breaking news plus all-day softball coaching duties Saturday kept me from finishing this by Sunday morning.)
To begin with, I would refer you back to an article I wrote a few months ago about Trump’s pending indictment in the Stormy Daniels hush money case in New York. The question I asked in that article was if is it wise for the state to prosecute a popular political figure like Trump even if the state has good reason to do so. The concern is that the political figure’s supporters will regard the prosecution as an undemocratic way to thwart the political agenda of their favored political figure, which could lead the political figure’s supporters to turn to extrapolitical and extralegal means to achieve their political goals. Prosecuting a prominent political figure may also normalize the practice, leading those in power to use the legal system to kneecap their opponents. It may be better instead to let the political system render its own verdict on the matter.
Yet powerful people shouldn’t be above the law either.
There is no simple resolution to this dilemma. These sort of cases call for prosecutorial discretion. It is not enough for prosecutors to simply follow the law and charge prominent political figures with crimes any time they can. They also need to consider the court of public opinion and how a prosecution may play out politically. Prosecutors need to be able to convince reasonable members of the public that their actions are justified. I argued there are four tests prosecutors should apply to politically-charged cases involving Trump to determine if they should go forward with them. Let’s apply those tests to this case.
1.) The charges [and facts in the case] should be significant enough to justify dragging the country through the ordeal of a trial. My main concern here was that the classified documents Trump kept would have been relatively insignificant. (The U.S. has a tendency to stamp “top secret” on documents that don’t really need that level of classification.) Given Trump’s ego and braggadocio, I thought there was a good chance he would have retained papers concerning, say, his meeting with Kim Jong Un or intelligence reports with attention-grabbing images.
But according to the indictment, that doesn’t appear to be the case: “The classified documents Trump stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.” It’s still possible these secrets aren’t all that secret, but indications are they were considered highly sensitive and more than run-of-the-mill briefing papers. In other words, it’s more likely than not these were genuine secrets and not souvenirs, which would justify a trial.
(In my original article, I only wrote the “charges” need to be significant. That seems like an incomplete formulation, however. More than just the charges, the facts of the case ought to be significant, too. It’s one thing to charge Trump under the Espionage Act for retaining a briefing paper on North Korean leaders and a whole other thing to charge him under the same law for retaining a sensitive report on the nation’s nuclear arsenal.)
2.) The charges should be directly related to Trump’s fitness to hold the office he seeks. This isn’t simply a matter of Trump taking documents with him when he left office, which is bad enough. He was also sharing them with people who weren’t authorized to know their contents and handling them as though they were his personal papers. The indictment suggests Trump can’t be trusted with the nation’s secrets, which presidents need to be able to keep.
3.) Trump’s own actions and words should clearly implicate him. The indictment is full of smoking guns that prove Trump knew the documents were classified, knew he had not followed the necessary procedures to declassify them, shared them with others anyway, deliberately obstructed the government’s efforts to recover the documents, and conspired with at least one other person to do so. There’s this exchange, which was recorded and witnessed by multiple people:
TRUMP: By the way. Isn’t that incredible?
STAFFER: Yeah.
TRUMP: I was just thinking, because we were talking about it. And you know, he said, “he wanted to attack [Country A], and what…
STAFFER: You did.
TRUMP: This was done by the military and given to me. Uh, I think we can probably, right?
STAFFER: I don’t know, we’ll, we’ll have to see. Yeah, we’ll have to try to-
TRUMP: Declassify it.
STAFFER: -figure out a -yeah.
TRUMP: See as president I could have declassified it.
STAFFER: Yeah. [Laughter]
TRUMP: Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.
STAFFER: Yeah. [Laughter] Now we have a problem.
TRUMP: Isn’t that interesting?
One of Trump’s lawyers testified Trump told him, “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told [government investigators] we don’t have [any documents] here?” Many of Trump’s statements over the past year concerning the case also imply guilt. When it comes to Trump’s own words, this looks like a pretty clear-cut case to me.
4.) The law would clearly speak to the crime and Trump’s actions. It doesn’t seem there’s much in the relevant statutes and in the facts of the case that call for legal interpretation or a novel application of the law. It’s pretty easy to say Trump broke the clearly-stated letter of the law. Of course, Trump’s lawyers will have something to say about that, but at least initially, prosecutors seem to have a pretty straightforward and simple argument to make.
So it appears this case passes my four-pronged test. But there are other aspects of this case that trouble me:
1.) There is still a special prosecutor looking into the classified documents Biden had in his possession. (Former Vice President Mike Pence was just cleared this week of wrongdoing concerning the classified documents found in his files.) My bet is Biden’s documents had been carelessly packed away in the final days of his vice presidency, but we don’t know the full details of that story yet. If Biden gets off the hook but the case is more complicated than that, the idea that the DC establishment treats its own differently than Trump could gain traction.
I also expect the MAGA mob to drag Hillary Clinton’s email server back into the public spotlight. If you would like to read why the Clinton case isn’t the same as the Trump case, though, I would recommend this article by conservative New York Times columnist David French, who writes about the test FBI Director James Comey used when deciding not to prosecute Clinton: “All [prior] cases prosecuted involved some combination of clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct or indications of disloyalty to the United States or efforts to obstruct justice.”
It’s also worth noting that special prosecutor Jack Smith has potentially countered the charge of hypocrisy in this case by noting Trump did not turn over the documents in question even after the government asked for them back. (So far, it looks like Biden turned his documents over to the government soon after they were discovered.) That obstruction charge distinguishes the Trump case from the Clinton and Biden cases. But that also potentially diminishes the charges against Trump somewhat: Suddenly the main sin isn’t Trump’s possession of the documents, but his deception and refusal to turn them over. The argument can be made that Trump’s attempt to keep his documents makes the case against him stronger since he is at that point knowingly breaking the law, but it may also suggest the government is out to get Trump by making the cover-up worse than the crime.
2.) What’s the motive? Trump’s major past scandals—particularly the Ukraine scandal and his efforts to subvert the 2020 election—saw him attempting to hold on to power. Even the flimsier Stormy Daniels case involved an attempt to keep an unflattering story out of the headlines in the weeks before the 2016 election. But why did Trump want to keep these documents? It appears he had no intention to undermine the United States by disclosing their contents to others, and the government has yet to point to an instance where Trump’s actions harmed the government. Instead, it seems he wanted to treat them as souvenirs from that really cool time he spent at the White House. That doesn’t excuse his having them or the potential for harm resulting from his cavalier possession of them, but he could convince people this is all overblown since he meant no harm and no harm resulted from his actions.
3.) Finally, I still wonder if the American people will care about this case since the government has retrieved the documents in question. Perhaps that’s one argument Trump’s lawyers will make: Since there wasn’t a damaging security breach, this isn’t a big deal and he should be let off easy. That doesn’t make Trump not guilty, but it diminishes the whole affair. I suspect a majority of the American people will ultimately believe Trump did something wrong here, but will a majority (or enough non-Democrats) care enough about it to see Trump’s prosecution as a righteous cause? Or will the fact Trump is actively trying to reclaim his access to top secret presidential documents lead more Americans to take this case seriously?
Let’s shift gears now to the political implications of the indictment. The big question is if Republicans will finally break with Trump over this. Early polls suggest he is retaining his support among Republican voters. Furthermore, Trump’s dire legal peril actually seems to have made his base’s defense of him more vociferous. Some of it is downright scary: The former GOP nominee for governor in Arizona and full-time MAGA provocateur Kari Lake said, “If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the N.R.A. That’s not a threat, that’s a public service announcement.” For his part, Trump has encouraged his supporters to gather Tuesday in Miami, where he will appear in court. Yes, that’s short notice, and his MAGA mob didn’t turn out in Manhattan for his court date earlier this year, but after 1/6, the potential for violence has to be taken seriously anytime Trump urges his base to show up for a legal proceeding.
I haven’t gotten a good sense for how most Republican politicians have responded to the charges. The Jim Jordans and Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world have predictably come to his defense. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, who’s currently on thin ice with the MAGA wing of the House caucus, called the indictment a “grave injustice.” Republican senators, however, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (but not Ted “Cancun” Cruz) have chosen radio silence. While that may be personal (there is no love lost between Trump and McConnell) it may also be a political calculation. It seems many Republican senators would prefer a nominee other than Trump in 2024, and there may be a sense Trump is in serious legal and political danger in this case. (Sneaking nuclear codes out of the White House and storing them in a bathroom isn’t a good look.) There’s also the fact national politicians have access to classified material themselves and would likely find it very hard to defend Trump’s handling of these documents without bringing their own trustworthiness into question. Additionally, if they were to defend Trump’s actions, they would probably face questions about whether Biden or other presidents could do the same and, if so, if there really was such a thing then as a “top secret” classification and if there are any limits on presidential power.
The other group of GOP politicians to follow are the Republican candidates for president. Most have decried the “weaponization” of law enforcement or called the indictment part of a witch hunt. Only former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (who called the indictment “devastating”) and Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson (who said the indictment showed Trump shouldn’t be running for president) condemned Trump. It seems to me most of Trump apologists (DeSantis, Haley, Pence, etc.) are threading the wrong needle: They don’t criticize Trump directly but blame Democrats and law enforcement for dragging the country through this mess and then call for the country to move on from it all. Their aim is not to anger MAGA voters so that if Trump does falter, they can move in to sweep up his voters. Trump won’t falter, though, if they won’t call him on his missteps. They could do that by telling voters Trump makes it too easy for Democrats to land punches and is his own movement’s worst enemy. Deciding to hide the nation’s nuclear secrets on the stage of your resort’s ballroom is basically the same as covering your bedroom floor in bear traps. If Democrats are as devious as Republicans make them out to be, the GOP needs a nominee who isn’t handing the Dems easy victories.
Unless a GOP candidate starts pushing that argument and somehow gets it to stick (it would take months for it to sink in, and the candidate making it would face a ton of abuse) I don’t see Republicans moving on from the guy. (I wrote this article two weeks ago explaining why.) That means the 2024 election will probably be a referendum on Trump rather than Biden, and whatever Biden’s liabilities are, I don’t see Trump winning that election.
Democrats should tread carefully until the Biden special prosecutor case wraps up, but I would have the following argument ready to go: “By now, it really doesn’t matter if Trump goes to jail or not. His lawyers can split all the legal hairs they want just as we’ve debated the fine points of whether or not something amounts to an impeachable offense. But don’t lose sight of the big picture here. The fact remains Donald Trump has threatened to withhold congressionally-mandated military aid from Ukraine unless its government provided him with material he could use to damage his political opponents; used false information to subvert a legitimate presidential election and incited a riot on Capitol Hill to prevent the certification of that election; and not only absconded with sensitive classified documents upon leaving the White House but shared some of those documents with others, lied to investigators about having them, and refused to turn them over when asked to return them. Taken together, it’s a pattern that should disqualify him from ever serving again as President of the United States. It makes no sense why the Republican Party has made defending this guy their major national priority.”
Signals and Noise
Semafor has a good breakdown of the key questions and key reactions related to the news of Trump’s indictment.
Peter Baker of the New York Times notes the profound irony of a man who rose to the presidency in no small part by attacking his opponent for mishandling classified information being indicted for taking classified documents with him upon leaving the presidency and sharing it with others. (“Throughout 2016, he castigated Hillary Clinton for using a private email server instead of a secure government one. ‘I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information,’ he declared. ‘No one will be above the law.’ Mrs. Clinton’s cavalier handling of the sensitive information, he said, ‘disqualifies her from the presidency.’ … Even in the what-goes-around-comes-around department of American politics, it is rather remarkable that the issue that helped propel Mr. Trump to the White House in the first place now threatens to ruin his chances of getting back there.”)
In a surprise legislative strike, MAGA Republicans in the House derailed a procedural vote on a rules package this past week in retaliation for Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s debt ceiling deal. This may seem like inside baseball, but it’s a big deal within the corridors of congressional power: A Speaker who can’t assume the loyalty of his caucus on a rules package is either an incompetent or weak Speaker (or maybe both.) This isn’t just a group of House members throwing a temper tantrum; it’s a direct attack on the Speaker’s power. If a Speaker can’t get a rules package passed, the Speaker isn’t governing.
Punchbowl News reminds readers that the strife among House Republicans imperils the government’s ability to function. While the debt ceiling crisis has been avoided, a number of key legislative deadlines loom in the fall, including the need to fund the federal government beyond September 30. Other bills that could be affected by Republican infighting: The farm bill, Coast Guard funding, Federal Aviation Administration funding, and pandemic preparedness.
Tim Miller of The Bulwark notices another problematic contradiction at the heart of Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign: He keeps insisting he’ll be Trumpier than Trump but takes offense at the notion he would be more dangerous than Trump.
The sheriff of Bexar County, Texas, has recommended charges against Ron DeSantis for the Florida governor’s migrant relocation scheme, which the sheriff said lured migrants onto a plane bound for Martha’s Vineyard with false promises of jobs and other opportunities. Meanwhile, California is threatening “kidnapping charges” against Florida officials responsible for arranging a recent flight of migrants from New Mexico to Sacramento.
Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio wants to investigate the links between academic disinformation specialists (scholars who study the spread of falsehoods and conspiracy theories) and the federal government. Jordan is concerned government officials, academics, and social media companies were trying to counter (false) narratives about the pandemic and the 2020 election, which he considers a violation of free speech.
Christopher Cann of the Orlando Sentinel reports the Republican prosecutor overseeing red-leaning counties in Florida declined to prosecute election fraud cases similar to those brought by the state’s election police.
Oklahoma has approved the nation’s first religious charter school, raising the issue of whether public money can be used for religious instruction.
In a surprise ruling, the Supreme Court threw out Alabama’s congressional map, ruling it unfairly discriminated against the state’s Black population. Roberts and Kavanaugh joined the Court’s three liberal justices to form the majority. David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report notes the ruling could effect districts in other states and, in a closely divided House, be enough to tip the balance of power in Congress.
Mike Orcutt of Quanta looks at how modern technology has made gerrymandered districts appear less gerrymandered and how mathematical analyses can still spot them.
Some conservatives argue abortion regulations recently enacted in Republican-led states in the U.S. don’t differ much from European abortion laws. Rachel M. Cohen of Vox investigates that claim and identifies major differences. (Julie C. Suk makes a similar argument in The Atlantic.)
Tanya Lewis of Scientific American found that birth rates in red states rose during the pandemic while falling in blue states. A good question, though, is why.
Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed an amendment to the Constitution that would regulate gun rights. (See my article from January about a similar idea below.)
Young voters really don’t like the GOP’s position on gun rights.
Ronald Brownstein writes in The Atlantic about the nation’s growing bloc of young Democratically-aligned voters and the decisive role they play in elections (and how that edge still may not translate to electoral gains for Democrats in red states.)
Vice News notes AI-generated political ads are here and no one knows what to do about them.
Jeff Asher writes in The Atlantic that murder rates in most American cities are falling, perhaps beginning to reverse the spike that occurred around the time of the pandemic.
State legislatures passed over 100 laws in recent years regulating “forever chemicals,” Kimberly Kindy of the Washington Post reports.
Dror Poleg warns in The Atlantic the next major economic crisis may spring from the collapse in value of downtown commercial real estate, a byproduct of the pandemic’s shift to virtual work.
With Ukraine’s long-awaited offensive now underway, The Guardian has a visual guide to the collapse of the Nova Kakhova Dam in Ukraine while the Washington Post looks at the consequences for both Ukraine and Russia.
Yascha Mounk writes for The Atlantic about Poland’s turn toward illiberal democracy and the lessons it holds for the United States.
International negotiators are working on a treaty that would curtail the planet’s use of plastic.
Researchers believe the draining of the Salton Sea in southern California has prevented a major earthquake from striking the land Los Angeles sits on for about 300 years. The problem: In that time, that fault line may only be building up energy for the Big One. Plans to refill the Salton Sea may also lead to more seismic activity.
Vincent’s Picks: Happy Valley
In the midst of what I would argue is the recently concluded Golden Age of Television, there was also a Golden Age of UK crime dramas: Sherlock (2010), Luther (2010), The Fall (2013), River (2015), etc. The best of the bunch remains Broadchurch (2013) starring David Tennant and Olivia Colman, a genuine whodunit with a climactic twist that punches you in the gut.
The problem with Broadchurch, however, is that the show flails badly in its second season before coming in for a soft landing in its third. If I am to recommend a contemporary UK crime drama, I’ll always direct viewers to that perfect first season of Broadchurch. If you’re looking for a full series, though, the answer has to be Happy Valley (2014) whose third and final season has finally arrived.
Written and created by Sally Wainwright, Happy Valley (which has won the BAFTA Award for Best Drama Series twice) stars Sarah Lancashire as Catherine Cawood, a divorced police sergeant in the Calder Valley of West Yorkshire. Eight years before the start of the show, Catherine’s eighteen-year-old daughter was raped and impregnated by sociopath Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton) and committed suicide shortly after giving birth to Ryan (Rhys Connah), whom Catherine now raises. Royce was never held accountable for the assault, but as the series begins, Catherine learns Royce has been released from jail after serving time for another crime. Royce would like to meet Ryan, while Catherine not only wants to keep her grandson as far away from his biological father as possible but is consumed by her quest to bring him to justice.
Norton’s Royce is one of the most wicked characters you’ll ever encounter on a TV show. He’s a diabolical man who sizzles at the thought of menace, the devil’s surrogate in a valley riddled with crime. (The drug trade hasn’t just ruined the lives of many of the region’s residents but has created networks of criminals who facilitate all sorts of illegal schemes.) Even from a distance he can make life miserable for Catherine and her family. But Royce isn’t the only criminal Catherine deals with over the course of the series. Each season also features a subplot involving desperate middle-class men whose poor life choices culminate in unforgiveable crimes Catherine ends up investigating. Evil on Happy Valley is both pervasive and particular, formidable and pathetic, and, for Catherine, something she must confront on both a professional and personal level.
As Catherine, Sarah Lancashire (who has won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress for this role) absolutely commands the screen. She strides into crime scenes or confrontations with criminals with a seen-it-all-before/just-another-day-on-the-job swagger that allows for a just a hint of exasperation. (Why, she seems to ask, are these idiots putting me through all this work when I’m just going to catch them anyway?) Reviews inevitably mention her police uniform, with one critic comparing it to a knight’s suit of armor. To me, it’s more like padding, something that softens the blows coming her way. Catherine is tough with lawbreakers, but mention Royce and her visage hardens while the gears inside her head start turning, suggesting this grandmother may just cross every moral line to avenge her daughter and protect her grandson. Catherine reveals her vulnerability during critical scenes with her sister Clare, a former heroin addict played by Siobhan Finneran, yet when Clare encourages her to soften up and move beyond her obsession with justice, Catherine seems to consider the source and reconvinces herself she is the only thing standing between the decent people of the world and the monsters who prey on them. (Lancashire and Finneran are excellent when paired on-screen. Their opening scene together during the third episode of the third season is riveting and crushing, a masterclass in emotional control.)
Unlike Broadchurch, Happy Valley isn’t a whodunit. Instead, the suspense comes from wondering how much trouble the perpetrators will get themselves into, the lengths they’ll go to in order to avoid capture, and how exactly Royce will torment Catherine and her family. Yet like Broadchurch, Happy Valley is also a deep dive into the sociology of northern England. The series shows how the working class of the deindustrialized Calder Valley region have been shattered and left to fend for themselves. Meanwhile, middle class resentment and frustration lead the relatively well-off into lives of crime. All this plays out against a West Yorkshire setting that is treated realistically rather than romanticized.
You may have noticed the nine-year gap between the series’ debut in 2014 and the release of the third and final season this year. (The second season premiered in 2016.) That break has allowed Connah to grow into a teenaged Ryan. As a boy, Ryan displayed a temper, which disturbed Catherine, who feared he’d inherited his father’s traits. The older Ryan is less angry but more interested in his ancestry. The concern now for Catherine—who worked so hard to shield Ryan as a child from Royce’s influence and the awful facts surrounding his birth—is that an adult Ryan will step into Royce’s world on his own volition. On the verge of retirement, the resolute Sgt. Cawood is keenly aware of how the supposedly happy valley she patrols can break those who call it home.
Happy Valley is available to stream on AMC+, Acorn TV, and BBC America (the latter of which is available with many cable packages.) The first three episodes of the six-episode final season are currently available to watch.